Interview with Edward Baring
Edward Baring is in the History Program and works with Peter Gordon.
Interview by Dr. Kris Manjapra, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities, UCLA.
Where did you receive funding?
CES Travelling Grant, and Harvard Sheldon Grant
Did you research question change a lot over the course of your field work?
The research question was broad to start with, so doing field work allowed it to become more specific, and certain lines of inquiry opened up that I had not foreseen.
When did the 'aha!' moment come?
Archival "aha" moments were not all that common. It was only discussing work with my adviser, friends etc. that allowed me to discover what was interesting in what I had found.
Did you experience field work as isolating? How important were conversations with other scholars? How important was just sitting down in an archive and getting through material?
I'm glad my work did not involve so many long stretches in archives. I found I could rarely think about what I had found there, and it was difficult to really work out what I needed from an archive on a first visit. Research work is quite isolating and in some archives human contact is at a minimum. However in others the experience was very positive and conversations with other scholars was important both professionally and socially.
Any advice about pacing? About how to get through those moments when things don't seem to be working?
In my experience it helped to be thinking about two or three chapters at a time, then a pause or a grinding halt in one, could be time to spend time on another. I also found that often you become very attached to a thesis that becomes increasingly non-viable given your sources. In such situations, though I never did this quickly enough myself, it is was surprisingly liberating to stop trying to explain away "bad" data, and be a little more flexible with your guiding theory. Often the result is a more nuanced and richer account. Perhaps an obvious thing to say, but quite hard to do in practice.
Tips on when to start writing versus reading?
Especially given the fact that I could not reproduce any of my archival documents, writing was an essential part of reading. It was only after trying to formulate an idea in writing, that it became clear what other evidence I would need, what things I had overlooked in the archive, and what I would need to return to the archive to check.
Did you present papers? Was this helpful?
I presented two papers, which was helpful for my confidence, but not really so useful with research.