Being in academia I actually tend to think of years as beginning in September and ending in August, but for the sake of staying in tune with those celebrating and marking the end of the year tonight, I’ll take stock here.
My biggest personal accomplishment this year was the completion of (the first full draft of) my book manuscript. This required gutting and rewriting my entire doctoral dissertation, which was a hard process to begin but which was ultimately pretty rewarding. I also added in two new chapters, workshopped the manuscript with some extremely impressive senior scholars at Princeton University, and submitted it for review at a top university press. Fingers crossed for the outcome of that sometime in 2019 .
Second to completing my manuscript was receiving the Best Dissertation award from the Migration & Citizenship section of the American Political Science Association. Maybe external validation shouldn’t matter too much, but it’s so rare in academia (at least for me) that you kind of have to take it where you can get it.
I also published two articles based off of my doctoral research:
A number of other articles are under review, including one article that has been under review for two years (!!). I guess 2018 also taught me just how frustrating and futile academic publishing can be.
Aside from peer-reviewed writing, I contributed a series of posts for Political Violence at a Glance, which is a blog dedicated to analysis of violence and its alternatives. Two of the posts focused on the return of refugees to Syria, a topic I’ve been following closely and anxiously over the last year and that I expect will be an even more pressing issue in 2019.
I also designed and taught my first course. The title was “Migration, Immigration and Displacement in the Middle East and North Africa” and I shared the syllabus online here for anyone interested. Teaching was both exhilarating and exhausting, and I definitely fell prey to imposter syndrome, but overall it was a good first experience.
Travel was a big part of 2018 for me. Aside from a number of domestic trips and trips to Canada, I had the chance to travel to Australia, Singapore, Greece, Spain, Japan, and also spent about 21 hours in China. This was a combination of job interviews, presenting at conferences, reunions with friends, and a vacation with my husband. Despite how much I’ve been traveling, I’m still too persistently lazy to apply for TSA pre-check or Global Entry. Maybe a goal for 2019?
In August I started listening to The Daily every morning, which made a huge difference in how I consume US news. I’m consistently blown-away by the production quality and have come to love hearing Michael Barbaro’s voice during my morning commutes. It was especially helpful during the Kavanaugh hearing, the Khashoggi murder, and in the lead-up to the US midterm elections.
Aside from The Daily, my favorite podcast series in 2018 was from 30 for 30 on the topic of Bikram Chowdry. It’s a narrative podcast that tells the story of Bikram’s arrival in the US, the establishment of bikram yoga, the harassment and sexual assault of his devotees, and how the bikram community has tried to reckon with the truth of his depravity.
I also read some incredible fiction in 2018. Fiction is a huge part of my life and I read every night before I go to bed. Even if it’s just for a few minutes, it helps me disconnect from whatever else is running through my head and causing anxiety. Here are my favorites from this year:
The Power by Naomi Alderman
The Perfect Nanny by Leïla Slimani
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Marra Anthony
Storyland by Catherine McKinnon
Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits by Laila Lalami
And while not fiction, I have to also recommend:
Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabova
The Return by Hisham Matar
This year I volunteered for an American political campaign for the first time since I was in university and John Kerry was running for president (I’m dating myself I realize). I was so disillusioned by US politics after Bush was reelected that I set my sights on working and living abroad, which I primarily did from 2007 until 2015. But this year, instead of reacting with disillusionment to the catastrophe of 2016, I volunteered for a local race and canvassed for Jason Crow running for the US House of Representatives in Aurora, Colorado. He won, as did many Dems running for the House across the country, and I’m excited to see what this new, more diverse, more female House will do in 2019.
I also joined a running group this summer, the Denver chapter of International Frontrunners. I’ve found that a lot of the running groups I’ve tried in Denver are cliquey or just way too fast for my pace. But Frontrunners, which is for LGBT runners and their friends, is incredibly welcoming and open to runners of all abilities.
In December I also found that I was going to be home in Denver for 30 consecutive days for the first time all year. I decided to take advantage of Kindness Yoga’s $30-for-30-days deal and pushed myself to take one yoga class each day for an entire month. It was difficult for the first week but then became something I looked forward to and craved. By the end of the 30 days I felt mentally and physically transformed, and my anxiety levels were at an all-time low. I’m trying to take the calm I found with me into 2019, but am also just storing this new-found knowledge of how much yoga can help when the going gets tough.
This list of course leaves out all the work and job related rejections I received this year, and brushes over various family and emotional traumas I dealt with. But looking back on some of the things I experienced, learned and accomplished this year is certainly a nice way to close things out.
I’m staying in this New Years Eve, both because it’s 15 degrees F and snowing outside but also because my husband and I have cobbled together a tradition of cooking good food and watching a film trilogy to end the year. We’ve decided tonight is going to be coq au vin with Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Trois Couleurs.
Thanks for reading, and all the best for the start of 2019.
Two important articles published in the wake of Matthew Hedges’ conviction of espionage in the UAE last week are worth your reading time. While Matthew was released and able to return to the UK, his conviction has led to a reckoning among academics (particularly Westerners) conducting research in the Gulf and in the MENA region more broadly.
Thefirst is written by Jannis Grimm, a research associate in Berlin, for Open Democracy. Grimm argues that,
“…countless researchers with little to no experience in the region…parachuted into the post-uprising contexts to interview the Tahrir revolutionaries. This had consequences – including for seasoned scholars who, for years, had treaded lightly to conduct their research despite the authoritarian closure. When the Arab Spring gave way to an autocratic restoration, both newcomers and old hands were in for a rude awakening.”
What became evident after the death of Giulio Regeni and again after the arrest of Matthew Hedges is that in the mind of Arab autocrats, “…the deployment of western scholars to the Arab World represents nothing short of a foreign intervention perpetuating neo-colonial asymmetries.”
The second article by Edward Fox for al-Fanar media looks at the shifting red lines in MENA countries that Western researchers may not know how to interpret. The author writes,
“As a political science student who had previously lived in the Emirates, Hedges may have found that research that previously would have been possible had become too sensitive to pursue safely in a changing political climate. He may have inadvertently crossed a red line, a limit of the permissible, where previously no such red line existed.”
These incidents have spurred numerous discussions in academic circles that are producing resources in the form of courses, handbooks and other types of trainings to help students and researchers learn how to protect themselves as well as interview subjects. Further institutional constraints and protections have also been imposed by universities, but mostly exist to protect them, rather than researchers, from liability. As Grimm writes,
“…the new restrictions on field research have unwittingly contributed to a securitization and juridification of field research. What is more, many of the new constraints on research are helpful in theory – but they put the burden of dealing adequately with risks firmly on the individual researcher.”
Frank and honest discussions are needed so that individuals do not have to confront difficult questions and circumstances alone. Last week at the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association in San Antonio, Texas I attended a panel put together by Rabab el Mahdi from the American University in Cairo that addressed some of these issues. Further such platforms and opportunities for debate and discussion-especially for graduate students and junior scholars-are needed.
I dragged Ganzeer along to an academic conference at the University of Balamand in Lebanon and it exceeded both our expectations. He wrote this short, thoughtful post on what made it such an exceptional meeting of minds (and hearts):
Overlooking Borders and Making Connections
There were those who spoke of geographical borders, and those who spoke of social borders. Linguistic borders were discussed, as were artistic and disciplinary borders. Three days of borderless talks about borders that were kicked off by a fascinating introduction to the very etymology of the Arabic word for borders (حدود), which shares its root with words like “severe” (حاد), “challenge” (تحدي), “determine” (حدد), “metal” (حديد), and “edge” (حد), which itself is also the word for “limit”.
This was at a conference at the University of Balamand in Lebanon, where I was in attendance with my lovely wife Kelsey P Norman who presented an excellent paper on migration and refugee policy in the Middle East and North Africa. The conference was organized by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, and involved faculty members from across a great variety of departments from within Balamand and beyond. Despite the absence of a number of European speakers who dropped out due to “safety concerns”, the conference was still rich and eclectic in subject matter and proceeded with smooth efficiency that not even frequent power cuts could hinder.
The cross-pollination of knowledge brings about a rush of gleeful neuroactivity, one that is largely absent from too many conferences held in the Western world, but more particularly American conferences, where a great deal of emphasis is often placed on the conference’s “brand”, making the actual presentations and talks feel like almost advertising for the conference’s name, which is pushed to the forefront of the event at the expense of everything discussed within. More often than not, the people who present at these conferences do so because they’re either: (A) Getting paid to, or (B) They want to push their “product”, its availability and method of purchase often making up the closing remarks of any talk.
Not at the University of Balamand’s conference on borders, where a genuine desire to share knowledge and learn new things was its core driving force. Something other conference organizers can learn a thing or two from.
Another thing that cannot go unmentioned is the family-like bonds that are formed at conferences like Balamand’s. I’ve been to my fair share of conferences across Europe and the United States, all very professional, but very rarely resulting in the kind of personal connections forged at places like Balamand. This is likely a Lebanese thing, quite possibly a Mediterranean thing, whereby yes, matters of the mind are important, but of equal importance are matters of the heart. Of making friends.
“I don’t know how to write love letters. But I wanted to tell you that my whole being opened for you. Since I fell in love with you everything is transformed and is full of beauty… Love is like an aroma, like a current, like rain. You know, my sky, you rain on me and I, like the earth receive you.”
mostly shades of beige in the closet, going to modern Asian-themed tea shops in the middle of the city, coats that fall straight, simple two-toned stationery from Japanese shops, short black heeled boots, buns (messy or neat), hosting dimly lit dinner parties with graphic designers and people in high end retail, dark lips and no other makeup, a tenth story flat with at least one brick wall, reading about fashion and its history, pinterest as their only social media, sleek gloves in the winter, linen and canvas totes, very carefully curated bookshelves.
lifestyles and aesthetics are different things. lifestyles are toxic, aesthetics are not.
examples:
lolita aesthetic: pink plaid skirts, cherry cola, dewy grass, picnics under the bright blue sky.
lolita lifestyle: taken advantage of by an old man, being manipulated, pedophiles, daddy issues, lifelong trust issues.
dark academia aesthetic: tweed blazers with elbow patches, winding forest paths, gothic architecture at your university, books scattered and random loose leaf pages.
dark academia lifestyle: drugs of all sorts, always sleep deprived and not in the fun way, obsession and destruction, mistrust, toxic relationships, living in fear.
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it is okay to like the lolita aesthetic, the pink skirts and holding a plastic red cherry under the baby blue sky; it is not okay to think the only way to live up to it is to be with a man old enough to be your father.
it is okay to like the aesthetic of “the secret history”, the studying in the library with piles of books around you and plush divans; it is not okay to think you achieve this by murdering a classmate, doing drugs, smoking cigarettes, being obsessed with your studies so that they ruin your life.
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so many aesthetics, like the lolita aesthetic or dark academia aesthetic, get a bad reputation because people associate them with the toxic lifestyle, but liking the aesthetic is simply finding what is visually pleasing to you. act as pretentious as you please, but don’t put others down in the process. like schoolgirl fashion, but don’t do it to attract kinky old men.
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this is what you find visually pleasing vs. toxicity.
The following is an excerpt; the second of a two-part interview with me on Mendeley Careers. (Find part one here.)
Everyone knows how hard it is to get a tenure track role, but we maintain this illusion that this is the only way we can have a fulfilling job. I advise researchers to look beyond the stigma: once you step off the academic track, there’s a world of opportunities. I’ve done work with government, I’ve led a research team investigating environmental health and safety, I’ve worked with nonprofits. I come to my career with the knowledge that there is a lot of fluidity in what I can do. I may do a lot of consulting for a while, and then go back into working for a traditional research organisation.
Researchers should know: our skills are highly valued outside academia, we need to learn how to market them. We should find a way to show to clients and employers how those research skills can be useful. If you can master that, potential employers and clients will give you amazing opportunities. For example, I once went to a job interview for a role as a researcher, and based solely on the questions I asked, the employers in question offered me a management role on the spot.
A non-academic career role is nothing to be ashamed of; it is a source of pride that strengthens research impact on society, as it brings knowledge to new sectors. There are many, many organisations which are in dire need of scientific skills and expertise; in the process, you can achieve great progress for a variety of communities.
Check out my resource, Intersectionality, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Access. There are five individual chapters which are intentended to work together. The information is a comprehensive, though not exhaustive, introduction into the barriers and solutions to discrimination in academia and research organisations. The issues are restricted to career trajectory from postgraduate years to senior faculty for educators and researchers.
Each section includes a discussion of the theoretical and empirical literature, with practical, evidence-based solutions listed in text boxes, capturing my long-standing career in equity and diversity program management, education and research.
This resource is split into five pages, for the purposes of improving reading experience; however, all five sections are intended to paint an holistic picture for social change.
I am a Chinese language student at BNU! I’ve finished my first 3 weeks at Beijing Normal University - I am preparing myself with the language, so next September (2022) I can start my PhD studies in Sociology
I was off from Tumblr for a few weeks, but…! I just came back ✨
You can check my last pots on Instagram : here : about my new journey and how is my student life at Chinese University (as an online student).
this is your daily reminder that it’s ok to be behind right now. it’s ok to have less motivation than you used to. it’s ok to have lower grades than you used to. it’s ok to read or write or do any hobbies less than you used to. you’re surviving a pandemic. you are doing amazing and I’m proud of you
