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Remembering Volkmar Pipek - on being curious, being you
Episode 22 • 24th April 2024 • Changing Academic Life • Geraldine Fitzpatrick
00:00:00 00:16:08

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Volkmar Pipek was a highly influential researcher from Uni of Siegen who sadly passed away in Jan 2024 after a long illness. This short episode draws from a written interview he gave to Mateusz Dolata on the occasion of his 2023 EUSSET-ISSI Lifetime Achievement Award. I read an extract where he shares his advice about becoming and being a researcher: Be curious. Be who you are. Be curious who you are. Wise advice for all of us.

Read the full interview with Volkmar Pipek

Interview conducted by Mateusz Dolata, University of Zurich

Text accompanying the EUSSET-ISSI Lifetime Achievement Award 2023 to Volkmar Pipek

EUSSET: European Society for Socially Embedded Technologies

ISSI: Institute for Social Informatics

Volkmar Pipek, University of Siegen and Volkmar’s publications



This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

Transcripts

Geri:

Welcome to Changing Academic Life.

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I'm Geraldine Fitzpatrick and this is

a podcast series where academics and

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others share their stories, provide

ideas and provoke discussions about what

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we can do individually and collectively

to change academic life for the better.

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Sometimes in the midst of all our

busy-ness and deadlines our pressures

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to perform and advance our careers.

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We can forget that life

is actually really short.

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And really precious.

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And we can lose perspective about

our work and what's really important.

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The passing of a very dear colleague

th of January,:

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Was a stark reminder of this for me.

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Volkmar died after a long

illness at the age of 56.

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Before he died.

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He was asked for advice to younger

colleagues and to researchers in general.

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And he summed these up as be curious.

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Be who you are.

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And be curious who you are.

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Wise advice from Volkmar that he

offered as part of an interview that

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was conducted on the occasion of his

being awarded the EUSSET and ISSI

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lifetime achievement award in 2023.

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EUSSET is the European society for

socially embedded technologies and ISSI

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is the Institute for socio informatics.

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To mark this award Mateusz Dolata

from the university of Zurich

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and with his hat as website and

social media person for EUSSET.

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Conducted an interview with On

his perspectives of CSCW, which is

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computer supported cooperative work

and research in general, including

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his advice for younger researchers.

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To quote from the EUSSET web page.

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Posted by Mateusz.

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The interview was published post hum.

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Following the sad passing

of Volkmar in January,:

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Before that he'd provided us with

the initial draft of the interview.

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After much deliberation, we decided to

share Volkmar's, insightful thoughts

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with the broader community in this form.

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End of quote.

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In this short episode, I'd like to share

an extract from Volkmar's interview.

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That specifically focuses on his advice.

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I share this with the permission

of Mateusz and of the head

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of the awards committee.

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As full disclosure.

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I was also a member of

this awards committee.

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First a little background on Volkmar.

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He was a faculty member in

computer supported cooperative

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work and social media, at the

university of Siegen in Germany.

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And his award was for his pioneering

work in the field of socio informatics.

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This work was uniquely driven and shaped

by his strongly held values around

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societal emancipation and democratization.

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And you can read more about this and his

many specific intellectual and empirical

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contributions in the statement about

his award and in the full interview.

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And I'll put links to both of

these on the episode, webpage.

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I've also known Volkmar for some

decades as a fellow colleague and

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researcher in the CSCW community.

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And always loved meeting up and chatting

with him, not just about his research.

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But just about the many ways that

his values played out in his life

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and the choices that he made.

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For example, in the interview,

you'll be able to read about his

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experience in starting a commune

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now to the extract from

the full interview.

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And it starts with the question posed

by Mateusz on behalf of EUSSET and

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then follows with Volkmar's answers.

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Begin quote.

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EUSSET remains a very young organization.

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One-third of active use set

members of PhD students.

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And there are equally many young

members working as postdocs

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or assistant professors.

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Many of the members are looking up to

you as an eminent authority, seeking an

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advice concerning research, focus, career

paths, or simply becoming a researcher.

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What would be your message to them?

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And Volkmar's response.

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Be curious.

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Be who you are.

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Be curious who you are.

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First be curious.

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For being a good researcher,

you need to take a deep interest

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into the world as it is.

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How it became like that.

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And where it's heading.

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With deep.

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I mean, that, it's important to

also acknowledge those aspects

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that are not in line with your

own convictions and experiences.

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As a young PhD researcher who took pride

in his participatory design attitude.

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I had to present the project.

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I was working into the worker

representative counsel of one of the

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largest German, private health insurance

companies in order to get their

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approval and ideally their support.

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I rarely spoke to a less interested crowd

in my life and got a very board approval.

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I left the meeting with the impression

those worker representatives

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were just not doing their job.

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But I picked that experience up and

tried to find out how that could

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be given that they volunteered

for the job and had been elected.

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That spark of interest helped

me finding out how difficult it

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actually is for practitioners.

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To imagine how their work would change.

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Given there are new software tools or

information infrastructures available.

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And given that impact

is so hard to imagine.

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Why should they not instead turn their

attention to much more obvious topics.

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Second.

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Be who you are.

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With a bachelor's thesis and

maybe also with a master's thesis.

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You may be able to regard those

as tasks that have to get executed

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in order to earn your certificate.

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And their exact topics and results

may never matter to you or to

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anybody in your future career.

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If you pursue a PhD with that attitude.

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It will be even more painful

and exhausting as it is anyway.

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If you stick with the topic for

three to five years, it will

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become a huge part of your life.

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And research suddenly becomes a very

personal, even intimate endeavor.

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It does not make sense to

undertake this endeavor.

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Just because there is funding

and a supervisor who finds

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you somewhat interesting.

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The topic, the methodology, the

scientific community report to.

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They all should fit your interests,

beliefs, experiences, and personality.

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In the final years of my master's

studies, I developed the idea that I

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could be a researcher in computer science.

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I had specialized on artificial

intelligence and even visited

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some national conferences.

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Due to a private contact.

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I stumbled across the book,

informatic and Gesellschaft, which

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is computer science and society.

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Co-authored by Thomas Herman, also

a member of the CSCW community.

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Which gave me for the first time,

the impression that there could

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be the option to pursue my general

interest into improving society.

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Also as a researcher in CS.

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I started out working for the DFK

I that German national research

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center for artificial intelligence.

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But then decided to change

to the university of Bonn.

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Although I'd been offered a

contract for only 10 months there.

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Although I had literally no clue

about the competences requested,

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which was CSCW and usability and

showed that in my job interview.

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Although all exclamation mark of

my future colleagues, therefore

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voted for another candidate.

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And although their boss

hired me, nevertheless, just

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based on my knowledge in AI.

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Not because I would particularly

fit the advertisement position.

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I did so.

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Just because former colleagues

of that group had shown an

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interest in electronic democracy.

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And I really wanted to learn to

work with users because that did

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fit my interest profile better.

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That was more who I was.

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Third.

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Be curious who you are.

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A PhD is usually located at a time

in your life when you've placed the

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first cornerstones of your life.

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You decided to finish an education

that would hopefully feed you

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for the rest of your life.

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You may have, or have had a

first long-term relationship.

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You may have moved and settled

in a new town for the first time.

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But things are still in motion.

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Life in general.

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And a PhD process for sure

will provide you with many new

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experiences and challenges that

have the potential to change you.

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That's okay.

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So don't stick too strongly

to your concerns and beliefs.

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Go with the flow and trust,

rather your skills of improvisers

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station, then your fear of change.

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That particularly applies to

your research topics and career.

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Before I submitted my PhD on

supporting appropriation work.

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I've been offered, interested in

PhD topics, including privacy in

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group work group, where there was

unpublished research available

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that I could have built upon.

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Also in metadata structures

for environmental informatics.

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And project money available for that.

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And inductive logic programming.

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And approach that would have allowed me

to continue with AI, with applications

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in CSCW my own idea, but really far out.

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The final topic appropriation.

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Only emerged in my third year as a PhD.

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And it took me three more

years to complete it.

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Not only to technically write it.

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But also in terms of re-interpreting

my research experiences so that they

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would form a whole in the dissertation.

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Well, I did not expect to be able

to combine my social political

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and technological interests.

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When I started my research career.

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I grew more and more confident

of myself to be able to do that.

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End of quoted extract.

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Thank you Volkmar there's so

much wisdom and insight here.

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From the perspective of.

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Distance.

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Be curious.

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Be who you are.

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Be curious who you are.

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And I, I loved that statement as part of

the third, be curious who you are about.

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Go with the flow and trust, rather

your skills of improvisation

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than your fear of change.

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I encourage you to go and read the

whole interview that Volkmar shared.

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I'm sure you'll love it.

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And it just provides such great

food for thought about, again,

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an example of a career path that

hasn't been straightforward and the

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work that's involved and the reward

that's attached with shaping career

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decisions, research decisions, life

decisions in line with what you really

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care about and with your values.

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And the difference we

can make in doing that.

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So again, thank you.

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Volkmar.

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And thank you.

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Mateusz for the interview and for

allowing us to share it here.

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And we'll finish with Volkmar's

final thought, from the interview,

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which locates our research endeavors

as part of a scholarly community.

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That's caring and inclusive.

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To start quoting from Volkmar

directly and I'll leave out some

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of the specific names he mentioned

just to keep it more general.

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But you can read this in

the interview itself.

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So Volkmar says.

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And as a final thought, I cannot

express enough gratitude for the

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general kindness and the respect I

experienced in this scientific community.

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As a young researcher, I

joined the community based on

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a certain political enthusiasm.

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Not based on a sound

education and much knowledge.

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Yet my colleagues accepted their

bosses decision to hire me.

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And took on the effort to

introduce me to the field.

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In the first years of my career, I've

been introduced to important scholars.

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Not based on my own scientific

merits, but based on a general

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culture of inclusiveness and

respect of this community.

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Aside from providing a nice feeling and

interesting discussion opportunities.

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It also shows in the

formal scientific process.

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The way, how respectfully reviews

are being written and how easy it

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is to access, reviewing committees.

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That's an asset.

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We can be proud of.

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And what we should cultivate.

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End of quote.

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And in honour of Volkmar.

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May we all play our own part in showing

kindness and respect to one another.

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And being part of creating that

inclusive scientific community . And

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remembering that life is short.

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And precious.

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You can find the summary

notes, a transcript and related

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links for this podcast on www.

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changingacademiclife.

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com.

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You can also subscribe to

Changing Academic Life on iTunes,

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Spotify and Google Podcasts.

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And you can follow

ChangeAcadLife on Twitter.

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And I'm really hoping that we can

widen the conversation about how

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we can do academia differently.

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And you can contribute to this by rating

the podcast and also giving feedback.

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And if something connected with

you, please consider sharing this

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podcast with your colleagues.

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Together, we can make change happen.

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