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Abstract
Gaining access to interdisciplinary research sites poses unique research challenges to technical and professional communication scholars and practitioners. Drawing on applied experiences in externally funded interdisciplinary research projects and scholarship about interdisciplinary research, this article describes a training protocol for preparing graduate students to understand the dynamic nature of access in interdisciplinary work as well as to develop a capacity for making a case about the value of their expertise in interdisciplinary research contexts. The authors situate the training protocol in the context of three distinct phases of case-making (individual, relational, and speculative) and note how the conditions for negotiating access vary within and across these phases. The authors conclude by describing implications to graduate students and faculty for theorizing access in this way and developing training to support graduate students’ negotiation of access in interdisciplinary work.
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Author Biographies
Mark A. Hannah is an assistant professor in the Department of English at Arizona State University. His research explores rhetorics of cross-disciplinarity, specifically on developing strategies that foster technical and professional communicators' capacity to work successfully across professional boundaries. His research has appeared in Nature, Technical Communication, Technical Communication Quarterly, Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, Communication Design Quarterly, Connexions International Professional Communication Journal, Business and Professional Communication Quarterly, International Journal of Business Communication, Programmatic Perspectives, College Composition and Communication, and chapters in edited collections.
Alex Arreguin is a residential faculty of first-year composition/technical writing and the writing program administrator at Mesa Community College. He also is a PhD student in Arizona State University's Writing, Rhetorics, and Literacies program. His current research interests include classical and contemporary notions of ethos and their relevance to how technical communicators negotiate notions of access, credibility, and authority in the workplace.
