Reblogging from 2015: Every time I publish an article based on my personal PhD experiences with fieldwork, I tell myself it will be the last. So far, I have four. Just last year, I was part of an awesome team and put out this one: Farrelly, T., Stewart-Withers, R., & Dombroski, K. (2014). ‘BEING THERE’:... Continue Reading →
Saying yes, saying no: 4 years tracking my voluntary academic activities
Recently in my Twitter circle, I've been part of a few conversations about academic workloads, work-life balance, and managing the pressure of early career researcher decision-making. It forced me to recall a post from January 2017, where I committed to putting some limits on the 'voluntary' parts of our job. But as you may recall... Continue Reading →
Academic Maternity Leave : The shame game
It is a milestone week. My baby is now past the six week mark. We saw our wonderful wise midwife for the last time professionally and were transferred into the care of our medical centre. I took my son for his vaccinations, somewhat more anxiously than with my older three: a Facebook friend had called... Continue Reading →
Becoming a quality scholar through deep work
How do we become scholars that produce quality thinking and research, and stay sane in an academic environment where bringing in salary recovery dollars and churning out publication 'fluff' sometimes seems more important than deep and rigorous research and writing? Many New Zealand academics would have faced their CVs with some angst this year as... Continue Reading →
On (the impossibility of?) settling down
It seems to be thing. Couples who fall in love with each other, commit to a shared life together, then at some point discover their idea of home is -- well, if not incompatible then with a pretty darn small overlap. I don't mean here in terms of tidiness and mess (although, sure, that is... Continue Reading →
Insecurities as a mum-employee
Today I had a major work-fail moment. I was organising honours students presentations, and had already underorganised that normally-well-attended event. It was first thing in the morning following a public holiday (Queens Birthday), and I was incredibly late and missed the first two presentations despite being the person who was supposed to be hosting it.... Continue Reading →
Writing First Year Geography Lectures
I've been very quiet in the blogosphere recently. Mostly because I have been preparing new lectures for a section of a first year course I am teaching. I taught first year almost exclusively in my first academic job at Macquarie University, and since I was starting at scratch with topics I had never lectured on... Continue Reading →
Academic mothering: reflections from guest blogger Dr Ann Hill
My friend and colleague Ann Hill has contributed a blog post for me today, inspired by the conversations we have had about managing our academic and mothering practices. Dr Ann Hill is a member of the Community Economies Collective, and has conducted research on food economies in the Phillipines. She is currently working on a... Continue Reading →