Matthew Sillence: Welcome back to PGR Matters, the podcast that

explores the world of research degrees and all things academic.

I'm your host Matthew Sillence. In this episode, we'll return to

our recent theme of open research. If you haven't heard

our three-part series. You can listen to our first three

episodes of season two to find out more. Now, over the last

academic year, I've been working with colleagues at the

University of East Anglia and the University of Essex to

promote engagement with open research practices. As part of

this project, funded by the Consortium for Humanities and

the Arts, Southeast England, or CHASE, we worked with staff and

postgraduate researchers from across the two institutions to

adapt an online educational resource called Copyright Dough,

created by Katrina Sundsbø and Hannah Crago. This game is

designed to help creators, researchers, students, and

educators think about the licensing of their work and

explore copyright exceptions, the expansion pack, co-created

with and tested by postgraduate researchers and open research

staff members, is now available to download from our project

site on the Open Research repository Figshare.com. Links

to the game and expansion pack can be found in the notes for

this episode. One of the contributors to our first play

test of the original copyright do was Gabriel Baxter Baker, a

postgraduate research student at the University of East Anglia.

We caught up with Gabriel in the summer to discuss what open

research and open access outputs meant for their research. So

it's a beautiful day. We're here on the UEA campus, and I'm here

with Gabriel Baxter Baker, who is one of our current

postgraduate researchers in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities,

Gabriel, I'm going to. We just had a chat a few moments ago,

and you told me that you've been interviewed a few times for

podcasts. You've been and and you're going to tell us a little

bit more about your academic background and how you've kind

of come to UEA. So maybe we kick off with that. What's your

what's your academic origin story?

Gabriel Baxter-Baker: Yeah. So originally, I came here to UEA

in 2011 to do script writing and performance, which I don't think

is offered anymore. But it's a great course, and then that very

much sort of, you know, gave me a lot of skills to then go

forward in that scriptwriting and performance arena. So I then

spent about a decade sort of traveling a bit around the

world, and then doing lots of oral storytelling, performance

poetry. Eventually, I came to drag and comedy as well, and I

run sort of cabarets and fundraiser events, and I'm very

involved with a few Prides, that sort of thing. So it's a lot of

fun. And then, yeah, 10 years after finishing the script

writing and performance, I came back to UEA to do the MA in

creative writing in prose. And then I decided to stay on to do

a PhD in, funnily enough, transgender oral storytelling

because it's what I've been doing for the last decade. So it

feels very full circle to be back.

Matthew Sillence: Yeah, that's so exciting. It's really nice,

actually. I think when people have been through our, you know,

through our university a few years ago, they come back. Have

you noticed any changes, perhaps, since that time?

Gabriel Baxter-Baker: Well, we're walking past the ziggurats

at the moment, and yes, they've definitely changed there because

a while ago I lived there, and now nobody lives there, which is

very spooky. So the beautiful monuments now. I think yeah,

there's no water stones on campus.

Matthew Sillence: That's true. That's

Gabriel Baxter-Baker: a that is a great loss to my heart. But

the library is as good as ever, and it is still a really

beautiful campus and full of really fascinating people. So a

lot's changed, a lot hasn't.

Matthew Sillence: Absolutely, yeah. It's it's a shame we're

you know we're in an audio medium today, but yeah, it's it

is it is looking pretty resplendent, and it's actually

graduation week as well, so it's kind of one of the most exciting

times of the year for us as academic staff as well, because

we and a little bit sad as well because we get to see people

we've known and and you know supported over a few years and

and and they're off going off with their lives, doing new

things, which is joy to see, but also tinged with a little bit of

sadness because we we may not see them again, or at least not

for a while. So not for a decade.

For a decade. Yeah. So anyway, we're we're here to to to chat

about your involvement in a research training program, which

was the Open Research for the Humanities series that was

funded by has been funded by the CHASE Doctoral Training

Partnership, and you mentioned a few moments ago the library

because actually we had some great colleagues from the

library and learning enhancement team involved in that, and also

the university. Of Essex, who we've had ---, sorry, Liam

Bullingham and Hannah Crago, who have just been so amazingly

supportive and and and very creative because they've shared

their resources with us to try to learn more about this thing

called open research. So, what? Why did you sign up for this?

So, what was your kind of interest in in that research

training? Of all the things, I suppose that you could do

related to your project or your your doctoral journey.

Gabriel Baxter-Baker: Well, I think one of the reasons I was

particularly interested in it is because of the fact that I'm

studying storytelling and I'm coming from that storytelling

background, because as a creative practice, storytelling

is very much the opposite of the I suppose modern system of

copyright and intellectual property in a way. Because it's

almost one of the things that comes up quite a lot in the

interviews when I interview other storytellers is we all

when we tell a story on stage, particularly a queer or

trans-leaning one, we'll always have someone come up afterwards

and say, "Did you write that, or is it a real story? And it's

always the "Is it a real story? and the the the sort of positive

connotations of a story that you did not write are much higher

than the positive connotations of a story you did write,

Matthew Sillence: right? And

Gabriel Baxter-Baker: there's, it's yeah, it's almost of a sort

of higher higher caliber if you didn't come up with it yourself,

yeah. Which is so different from the from the the general sort of

creative practice of of modern society, yeah, yeah. And I think

it becomes very interesting and tricky to work out how we can,

or at least for me with the research, how I can write about

this in ways that honor the people who are telling the

stories currently and where they've come from, and the sort

of history of them, which I think leads to you know

storytelling is a very citational kind of iterative

practice. People change the stories every time they tell

them, but also generally most of us go. And I first heard this

story in this place or from this person.

Matthew Sillence: Right. And there's

Gabriel Baxter-Baker: always that sort of desire to trace the

history of it, which is very different from a lot of a lot of

I suppose sort of copyright conventions. So it was

interesting learning about I suppose, the more, I guess,

decided and set forms of how that can function within an

academic setting.

Matthew Sillence: So, so I guess what you're saying is, there's a

there's a kind of variation on the theme, I suppose, that

happens with storytelling. So that there's a people recognize

the context in which they first heard something, but there might

be some changes, some embellishment, or of that

product over time and of that through the process. Yeah.

Whereas sometimes, I guess, with a lot of academic writing and

output, so that they seem a bit crystallized, a bit sort of you

know limited to those contexts. Yeah, yeah. So, what when you

were going through this program? I know you were very actively

involved in the play testing workshop that we we ran here at

UEA, which involved for those who've listened to some of our

other episodes, the Play-Doh, which we were using, we were

creating some interesting models, and we were learning a

lot about Creative Commons licensing, which I think this

year is the 25th anniversary of Creative Commons licenses. So

they've been around for. I didn't

Gabriel Baxter-Baker: realize it was that recent. Yeah,

Matthew Sillence: yeah. So it was, yeah. It was only like

2001, I think, when it got when they got started and kind of

codified, and so they've had a fairly long life. But funnily

enough, not always licenses that we're aware of. So we most of us

have heard of copyright, but it's not necessarily what what

is kind of what works, or at least is how it relates to

Creative Commons in terms of use rights. So, so you were learning

a bit about that through the through the workshop. Is there

anything that's kind of stands out as most important for you

about open access or about open research generally.

Gabriel Baxter-Baker: I think I didn't realize before coming in

just how many variations there are. So you really can. It feels

like you very much can customize pretty much exactly what you

want the copyright on a piece to be, and that's not something I'd

really known before. Because before the the copyright play

video game. I was aware of of Creative Commons largely through

being a chronically online teenager, and you know being

very involved in sort of fandom spaces and like online creative

spaces, and also in doing a lot of I suppose using a lot of open

source software. Which often has a Creative Commons license

involved with it in some form, at least the kinds I was using.

So I never really, I guess, knew what any of it meant beyond you

can use this and do something you want with it. So it was

really interesting to find out that there are so many different

versions of it, and you can, you know, you can sort of almost

plug and play with some of them, really.

Matthew Sillence: Yeah, yeah. So that that's kind of this idea of

remixing, I suppose, that we explored a bit in the workshop,

so that artifacts can be shared, you know, brought into use for

other communities and individuals to to use and to to

create variants of and to think about, and we saw that I guess

in the game itself, as people were creating sometimes work

that was inspired by other people's creations, sometimes

direct copies of their creations, and so how does that

kind of speak to, I guess your own your own academic work. Now

you you said you you had this chronically online teenage

experience and exposed to kind of open open access or open

source content. But when it comes to your own kind of

academic outputs, you as a creator within the context of a

university. What what do you think?

Gabriel Baxter-Baker: Well, I think it means

Matthew Sillence: for you

Gabriel Baxter-Baker: because I'm doing a creative and

critical writing PhD, where I'm I'm using a lot of creative

practice and I'm writing a lot of creative writing as well as

sort of critical writing, as much as there can be a

distinction. I think for me, it's probably almost more. It's

interesting to to me the fact that you know creative work can

be treated as research and is very much a form of research,

and how that can be sort of licensed for reuse. I think

particularly given my creative output is going to be it is

transgender folk tales and fairy tales. I very much want them to

be things that people can do the same thing that I'm doing when

I'm writing them, which is going. Oh, I found this story in

this place. Thought it was really cool. Here's something

I've now done with it.

Matthew Sillence: So yeah, so there's that that sort of

experiential side of it in in you coming through. Yeah, I

think I very

Gabriel Baxter-Baker: much want that, and also really the

critical side as well. I want it to be something that people can,

with with an interest in this area, read and go, oh, I'm going

to, you know, draw something from this and and create

something of my own with this. Obviously, there's you know

there are considerations around what that might look like, and

I'll probably get a clearer idea of what kind of like open access

I might want to post on it. But I'll probably get clearer idea

of that toward the end of the toward the end of the work,

rather than this early in. But I think it's something that is

very much of interest.

Matthew Sillence: I think it's a really fascinating moment. I

remember Grant Young saying quite early on in our program.

So Grant, you know, obviously at the University of East Anglia

Library, and has been really supportive and has has helped

direct this program. Has been teaching on it, and his point

about this being a sort of slightly awkward time in the in

the world of open research and open access, and so there's lots

and lots of things that are going on, and there's a little

bit of confusion around what is appropriate at the moment to to

make available publicly and to allow reuse for and research

funders are kind of pushing more towards open outputs, so

actually having more material that's publicly available coming

out of a you know larger research project. For a for a

postgraduate researcher, the end thing tends to be that thesis

because that's the that's the fundamental thing that's on on

the digital repository, but there are sort of embargoes and

restrictions around that, particularly with for creative

work as well, where individuals might want to protect some of

that research and that writing for a different output, so a

different set of licensing terms, but we we learnt a lot

about, I guess, alternative open practices from Samuel Moore at

the University of Cambridge, and this idea that in the arts and

humanities there are different ways of being open, and

sometimes it's not just about the the output being open, but

something about the process that's involved. Did any of that

kind of resonate with you in terms of your experience and

your practice? I suppose.

Gabriel Baxter-Baker: I think yeah. I think regardless of

whether it's academic or creative or any sort of a. Of

your life, I think there's often a there can be a very strong

temptation to be quite defensive of the things that we really

deeply care about that we want to work on very closely, and

there can be a sort of protectiveness that can make it

difficult to want to share those things with other people, which

I think is you know just sort of a part of human nature really.

But one of the really interesting things I thought,

sort of doing the the workshop was one of the things that I'm

really sort of passionate about within the storytelling scene

and within my academic work as a result is that culture of

sharing everything and accepting that when we tell a story we are

not we're not claiming it. We're doing the exact opposite. We're

sharing it now. Go forth and share it if you would like, in

whatever way you would like. It's a very open sort of forum,

and the acceptance is that people will tell the story in

ways that you sort of listen to and go, "Hmm, lovely. Completely

wrong, but lovely. And you know, we all have those kind of

responses sometimes. But it's that's just how that how that

sort of the culture functions, and I think it's a difficult

thing to work out how that could look with academia, and I think

in some ways the workshop helped helped quite a lot with that,

and one of the things that sort of came out of it was I sort of

made a commitment to myself that anything I'm working on for the

for the PhD that might be of use to another academic or someone

who or one of the other storytellers is I will just send

it to them.

Matthew Sillence: Yeah.

Gabriel Baxter-Baker: Regardless of regardless of what whether I

think it's you know good enough or finished or any of that, and

as a result, you know I've done a few sort of exchanges of of

academic work with a few other academics who are starting to

work in this same kind of arena.

Matthew Sillence: Yeah,

Gabriel Baxter-Baker: and that's been really fascinating in the

way that it's enabled much more much more of a sense of

community among the very few of us working on this area, yeah,

Matthew Sillence: yeah, I like I like what you're saying there

about community because it seems to be a very big part of this

idea of you know a wider conception of open research

practice. So not just thinking about the kind of individual and

the finished product as this kind of like it's done in

secret, and then one day something polished is released

into the world, and it's kind of fully fully fledged. But

actually thinking about the process that goes behind that,

how it's come into being, and so those interactions that you're

having with other you know storytellers or other community

representatives, they they're part of that journey and part of

that process, and are you are you kind of documenting that in

any way? I mean, are you thinking about ways of you sort

of talk about or reflecting on that in your work itself? I

think it's something that will come up in the sort of

introduction and conclusion is the strength of the sort of the

thirst for

Gabriel Baxter-Baker: this community. One of the

storytellers that I interviewed had a beautiful statement. I

can't. Don't know if I can remember it verbatim, but she

said that her biggest dream is to help to create a corpus of

queer folk tales and fairy tales, and like myths and

legends. So like a queer storytelling corpus, which I

think a lot of us very strongly share, and you know it's been

wonderful interviewing everyone because we all have come to the

same thing that we deeply love from very similar spaces. And

whether we've, however we've started on this sort of journey,

we're all very much in the same sort of boat now, and all of us

are very. It's so far it's been great. I just get on very well

with all of them. That's been really lovely. I think that sort

of desire for community and willingness to try to develop

that among each other is definitely quite a key part of

of the the work I'm doing. Because a lot of what I'm

arguing is that it is a form of community building exercise.

Matthew Sillence: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Thanks,

Gabriel. I think that brings us to the conclusion of our of our

discussion. But was there anything else that you were

thinking about with, I guess, as the future of your project, or

maybe recommendations for other researchers who are working in a

similar sort of area? Maybe I know. There's don't quite know

how big the the kind of the the storytelling community is in all

of its different manifestations. But would you would you make any

recommendations?

Gabriel Baxter-Baker: I think that largely it would just be

reach out to everybody you possibly can because we're all

studying this or doing this because we really love it. So if

you ask us to talk about it, we're going to not shut up. So

it's yeah, it's a a place I think with a with a great deal

of of love and determination to share. So it's a very very

pleasant space in which to be, you know, it can. Conducting

research because everyone wants to talk about it. Yeah, yeah,

which is a really lovely, really lovely and very sort of

fortunate position to be in.

Matthew Sillence: Excellent. Where can people find you?

Because it'd be nice to you know if they want to get in touch and

learn more about your work.

Gabriel Baxter-Baker: Yeah, I am probably my easiest way to find

me would be either via email or Instagram. So on Instagram, I'm

Thorn.Lucid. Thorn like on a plant, or Lucid Ears is the

other one. That's my company that I run. And for emails, then

either my university email address, which is

Gabriel.Baker@uea.ac.uk, or my performance email, which is

lucidfaerietales@gmail.com. But because I like to make things

complicated, the fairy is spelt F-A-E-R-I-E. Excellent. Yeah,

Matthew Sillence: brilliant. We will add that to the show notes

so people can contact you as well if they want to know about

that. Great. Thank you. But thank you very much, April, and

thank you for your participation and contributions to the

program. Because actually, the the new resource that we've been

developing couldn't have come into being without you and the

other contributors on the program as well. So I very much

look forward to next week. Actually, we're doing a a play

testing workshop of that. So so your your suggestions and

recommendations are are coming through into the into the new

product, and hopefully that will be released on an open access

license over the summer. So

Gabriel Baxter-Baker: brilliant!

Matthew Sillence: We'll continue our walk. Thanks very much. As

Gabriel explained, open research is very much an ethos as much as

a set of practices. In the Copyright Dough expansion pack,

we explore how researchers work with others through a new paired

play round. This provides a new dimension to the decision-making

process for those in the arts, humanities, and social sciences,

highlighting the importance of communication with research

partners and participants. Our project contributors suggested

that players of Copyright ough needed to respond to uses of

their research, so we introduced the chance cards, adding an

element of unpredictability. Drawing a card from one of two

decks provides a novel scenario that researchers will need to

respond to. They will need to decide not only if the use of

research outputs is consistent with the licensing terms, but

also if they're comfortable with how such materials are used and

by whom. If you'd like to learn more about copyright dough and

the new expansion pack. Check out the links in the notes for

this episode. If you played the game or have an idea for

adapting this for your own practice, you can contact the

show at

pgrmatters@pm.me.