Papers by Crystal V Olin (previously Filep)
Filep, C. V., Turner, S., Eidse, N., Thompson-Fawcett, M., & Fitzsimons, S. (2017). Advancing rigour in solicited diary research. Qualitative Research, 1468794117728411. Solicited diaries/journals are increasingly popular as an innovative qualitative method in the so... more Solicited diaries/journals are increasingly popular as an innovative qualitative method in the social sciences for better understanding people’s everyday lived experiences. In this article we create a framework for maintaining rigour while using such diaries. First, we systematically evaluate 43 research papers focusing on the method, drawing on Baxter and Eyles’ (1997) seminal evaluation of rigour in qualitative human geography research. We ascertain that significant improvements could be made to procedures for obtaining and analysing diary content. Second, we develop a framework to encourage rigour in diary research. We test our framework by evaluating research conducted by two of our authors who employed solicited diaries with street vendors in Vietnam. We propose that our analysis and framework can help social scientists improve the rigour of solicited diaries as a research method, and provide a model for enhancing rigour in other emerging qualitative approaches.
Solicited diaries can be used to delve into otherwise unreachable interpretations of social and p... more Solicited diaries can be used to delve into otherwise unreachable interpretations of social and physical experiences. Diaries help researchers to understand the embodied and the emotional in human geography. In this paper we develop on the work of multiple disciplines, enhancing the rationale as to why and how to employ diaries, and highlighting the benefits and drawbacks associated with this methodological tool. Notably, we extend the literature related to solicited diaries into the unfamiliar through examples from our research with scientists working in Antarctica who maintained diaries for us. We illustrate the potential for such diaries to elicit meaningful narratives that complement and extend data collected through interviews. Diaries provide timely, in situ space for emotional reactions to and contemplations of the immediate environment, as well as on every day and out of the ordinary events, while interviews provide interviewees with time and distance from the field to offer reflections based on lasting impressions. In particular, when combined, solicited diaries and interviews can substantially enrich investigations of those innately human, yet often elusive, places of the mind – revelatory places – in-between people and the environments that move them.
Academic examinations of visioning, the active imagination of possible futures, have been largely... more Academic examinations of visioning, the active imagination of possible futures, have been largely overlooked in tourism studies. While a significant tradition of research on visioning exists outside tourism, particularly within urban planning, there is a lack of knowledge on host community visioning processes in island tourism destinations and potential positive outcomes of such processes. This paper explores possible futures envisioned by residents of the Indonesian island of Bali, as well as the transformative potential of such processes. Writing templates were embraced as an appropriate mode of qualitative inquiry, through which 202 Balinese residents assessed the current state of their island and envisioned possible futures for it. Through a detailed thematic analysis of templates, visions of better transportation, education and health systems emerged. It is argued that such visions should inform efforts to address sustainability challenges when fed back to the community through wider political dialogue. Results of the study have therefore informed the development of Bali's practical tourism strategy framework, especially Bali's 2050 roadmap for sustainable tourism development. Although the current state of tourism was perceived in a more positive than negative way, respondents nonetheless imagined change for future tourism on the island. Due to soaring visitor numbers, the long-term sustainability of Bali as an important island destination depends on changes which the visions presented here may help effect.
Recognizing how stories connect us with the built environment is a critical component in understa... more Recognizing how stories connect us with the built environment is a critical component in understanding how our socio-cultural identities are contextualized. In this paper, narrative is proposed as a conceptual link between wide-ranging typologies of contemporary urban design and planning literature. The link between communities and their built environment is elaborated. A way forward in place-making efforts is proposed in which the narrative content of our cities is given particular attention.
Envisioning Sustainable Northampton is the product of work commissioned by the Northampton Design... more Envisioning Sustainable Northampton is the product of work commissioned by the Northampton Design Forum (NDF) in the summer of 2008, and executed between September and early December of 2008 as an academic exercise by graduate architecture and urban design students from the University of Notre Dame. Envisioning Sustainable Northampton represents work undertaken subsequent to a seven-day on-site September 2008 charrette, and proposes images of and guidelines for both present and long-term development in Northampton.
The narrative theme of Envisioning Sustainable Northampton is the inherent sustainability of traditional architecture and urbanism. The Notre Dame School of Architecture’s guiding ideal is a built environment that is convenient, durable and beautiful; and we contend that by being convenient, durable and beautiful, the built environment will necessarily also be sustainable. This makes our own ideals congruent with a guiding ideal of Northampton, for insofar as it has been publicly articulated in the document Sustainable Northampton, the guiding ideal of contemporary Northampton is sustainability.
Sustainable Northampton relies upon a definition of sustainability provided by the 1983 United Nations Brundtland Commission on Environment and Development, which defined sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” With this ideal we are in complete accord; but with respect to existing conditions and future developments in Northampton, the implications of the idea of sustainability beg a number of questions regarding Northampton’s attitude toward the following: whether or not Northampton should grow in population; preservation of and improvements upon Northampton’s natural and agricultural landscape (including trees and wetlands); economic development in Northampton, including the proximity of jobs, residences and retail activities, and whether and how much retail should be provided by non-locally-owned businesses; a greater-than-sprawl density of population and uses, and whether more-dense-than-sprawl human settlements can be satisfactorily “green” by the presence within them of nature preserves, parks, greens, squares, boulevards, and tree-lined streets; and issues of justice and generosity with respect to the availability of affordable housing for all those who work in Northampton.
Conference Presentations by Crystal V Olin (previously Filep)
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Papers by Crystal V Olin (previously Filep)
The narrative theme of Envisioning Sustainable Northampton is the inherent sustainability of traditional architecture and urbanism. The Notre Dame School of Architecture’s guiding ideal is a built environment that is convenient, durable and beautiful; and we contend that by being convenient, durable and beautiful, the built environment will necessarily also be sustainable. This makes our own ideals congruent with a guiding ideal of Northampton, for insofar as it has been publicly articulated in the document Sustainable Northampton, the guiding ideal of contemporary Northampton is sustainability.
Sustainable Northampton relies upon a definition of sustainability provided by the 1983 United Nations Brundtland Commission on Environment and Development, which defined sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” With this ideal we are in complete accord; but with respect to existing conditions and future developments in Northampton, the implications of the idea of sustainability beg a number of questions regarding Northampton’s attitude toward the following: whether or not Northampton should grow in population; preservation of and improvements upon Northampton’s natural and agricultural landscape (including trees and wetlands); economic development in Northampton, including the proximity of jobs, residences and retail activities, and whether and how much retail should be provided by non-locally-owned businesses; a greater-than-sprawl density of population and uses, and whether more-dense-than-sprawl human settlements can be satisfactorily “green” by the presence within them of nature preserves, parks, greens, squares, boulevards, and tree-lined streets; and issues of justice and generosity with respect to the availability of affordable housing for all those who work in Northampton.
Conference Presentations by Crystal V Olin (previously Filep)
The narrative theme of Envisioning Sustainable Northampton is the inherent sustainability of traditional architecture and urbanism. The Notre Dame School of Architecture’s guiding ideal is a built environment that is convenient, durable and beautiful; and we contend that by being convenient, durable and beautiful, the built environment will necessarily also be sustainable. This makes our own ideals congruent with a guiding ideal of Northampton, for insofar as it has been publicly articulated in the document Sustainable Northampton, the guiding ideal of contemporary Northampton is sustainability.
Sustainable Northampton relies upon a definition of sustainability provided by the 1983 United Nations Brundtland Commission on Environment and Development, which defined sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” With this ideal we are in complete accord; but with respect to existing conditions and future developments in Northampton, the implications of the idea of sustainability beg a number of questions regarding Northampton’s attitude toward the following: whether or not Northampton should grow in population; preservation of and improvements upon Northampton’s natural and agricultural landscape (including trees and wetlands); economic development in Northampton, including the proximity of jobs, residences and retail activities, and whether and how much retail should be provided by non-locally-owned businesses; a greater-than-sprawl density of population and uses, and whether more-dense-than-sprawl human settlements can be satisfactorily “green” by the presence within them of nature preserves, parks, greens, squares, boulevards, and tree-lined streets; and issues of justice and generosity with respect to the availability of affordable housing for all those who work in Northampton.