Srikant Sarangi is Professor in Humanities and Medicine and Director of the Danish Institute of Humanities and Medicine (DIHM) at Aalborg University, Denmark (www.dihm.aau.dk). Between 1993 and 2013, he was Professor in Language and Communication and Director of the Health Communication Research Centre at Cardiff University (UK), where he continues as Emeritus Professor. During 2021-2022, he is Visiting Chair Professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. In recent years, he has been Adjunct Professor at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway (2017-2021); Visiting Professor at University of Jyväskylä, Finland (2017-2020); Visiting Professor at the College of Medicine, Qatar University (2017-2020); Visiting Professor under the Academic Icon scheme at University of Malay, Malaysia (2013-2015); Visiting Research Professor, Centre for the Humanities and Medicine, The University of Hong Kong (2013-2016); Adjunct Professor at NTNU, Norway (2009-2013); and Honorary Professor at Aalborg University, Denmark (2009-2014).
In 2012, he was awarded the title of ‘Fellow’ by the Academy of Social Sciences, UK. In 2015, he was elected as a ‘Foreign Member’ of The Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters (Societas Scientiarum Fennica).
His research interests include: institutional and professional discourse from an applied linguistics perspective (e.g., health, social welfare, bureaucracy, education etc.); communication in genetic counselling, HIV/AIDS, telemedicine, primary care and palliative care; communication ethics; teaching and assessment of consulting and communication skills; language and identity in public life; intercultural pragmatics. He has held several project grants to study various aspects of health communication.
He is author and editor of twelve books, guest-editor of nine journal special issues and has published more than 250 journal articles and book chapters in leading journals. In addition, he has presented more than 1000 papers (including plenaries, keynotes, masterclasses and workshops) at international conferences and other forums. Since 1998 he is the editor of TEXT & TALK: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language, Discourse and Communication Studies (formerly TEXT) as well as the founding editor, since 2004, of both Communication & Medicine and Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice (formerly Journal of Applied Linguistics). He is also general editor of the book series Studies in Communication in Organisations and Professions (SCOPE). He serves as an editorial board member for other journals and book series[es], and as a consulting advisor at many national and international levels.
Over the last twenty years, he has held visiting academic attachments in many parts of the world including: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Italy, Malaysia, Nepal, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania, UK and USA.
Beyond ‘research ethics’: The ethical dilemma of rigour and/or relevance in interpretation-driven qualitative inquiry
The research act, quintessentially, constitutes an ethical act: Ethical decisions during the research process are cumulative configurations of regulatory principles and contingent practices. Any contingent decision made at one point in the research trajectory will have intended and unintended consequences, especially in the context of qualitative research, including educational research. In this presentation I go beyond the conventional parameters of research ethics (mainly focused on recruitment of participants and collection of data with informed consent) to address the ethical dilemmas of interpreting data and communicating research findings, under the labels ‘interpretation ethics’ and ‘communication ethics’, respectively.
I begin by suggesting a basic distinction between data-driven vs. interpretation-driven qualitative inquiry, which is premised on demystifying what constitutes bottom-up, data-drivenness as well as the emic-etic dichotomy in qualitative research. My discussion will foreground the challenges qualitative researchers face in their everyday interpretive practices relating to raw data and resultant findings. I will also consider the institutional and epistemological consequences surrounding the ‘illusion of choice’ and the ‘imperative of eclecticism’ that qualitative researchers steer through in their ‘engazement’ with data. In drawing attention to the ethical dilemma of ‘rigour and/or relevance’, I suggest that while qualitative researchers’ conceptual predispositions are likely to be aligned with rigorous methodological and analytical frameworks, the practical impact of their research may not directly follow from such rigour. In conclusion, I urge for the affordance of critical reflexivity in our interpretive endeavour.