Reflections on life and work from Aotearoa New Zealand
Writing a book is so hard. Well, drafting a book was relatively straightforward. But the post-review rewrite and edit has been brutal. It's not that I can't do it, it's finding the time and space to have uninterrupted writing and editing that allows me to retain the whole book in my head while I finish... Continue Reading →
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 →
In a previous post reviewing Cal Newport's book Deep Work I promised I would write a post sharing more collective strategies for enabling deep work, in particular for people with heavy care-loads. I suggested that sometimes the consequences are different for women trying to draw a line around their deep work time, and I imagine... Continue Reading →
I am about three chapters in to Maria Puig de la Bellacasa's book Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds. In the same way that Richard Rohr seems to express my thoughts before I even am conscious of having them in the area of spiritual practice and belief, Puig de la Bellacasa seems to... Continue Reading →
Women still do the majority of household caring labour. But not only this, women's caring labour has expanded to include care not just for families and their needs but also for the environment and sustainability. Some studies frame this as a form of inequality, another example of how the 'dirty work' of society gets lumped... Continue Reading →
So it has been quite a long time since I blogged -- mostly because the second half of 2015 was taken up with intense teaching and a return to fulltime work. Ironically, a lot of my research work is about how the home and domestic spaces are sites of enacting postcapitalist politics for different kinds... Continue Reading →
In her book The Logic of Care: Healthcare and the Problem of Patient Choice, Annemarie Mol relates a story that partially prompted her philosophical investigation into choice and care in the Dutch healthcare system: It is still the early 1990s. I am pregnant and 36. A national committee of experts in the Netherlands where I... Continue Reading →
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 →
When it comes to applying for jobs as a mother, there seems to be two approaches to explaining any gaps in your CV. The first approach is to maintain that 'My personal life is none of their business' and just not really deal with gaps at all, not mention your children or marital status or... Continue Reading →
Early career researchers are often applying for a limited number of jobs in a really competitive market. In New Zealand, this is compounded by the fact that universities are partly funded by what is called Performance Based Research Funding (PBRF), a system where every few years, all our 'outputs' are entered and ranked and labelled... Continue Reading →
I have recently been reading David Keirsey's book Please Understand Me II, having read Please Understand Me in the first edition many years ago. He uses the Myer-Briggs personality categories to describe four basic temperaments and 16 role variants. His main point is that much of our differences in communication and the way we interact... Continue Reading →
So, I have been the primary income earner in all my 14 years of marriage. And in that time, I have had three children. I breastfed my first two for around two years each, and plan to do the same for my youngest. But my work requires travel. When I say 'require', I wouldn't lose... Continue Reading →
In the previous posts 'Wife of a Stay-at-Home Husband' and 'How to get children to help around the house' I began to think about shifting out of the role of 'Household Organiser' that I seem to have acquired over the years. One of the commitments I made while writing the Wife of a Stay-at-Home Husband... Continue Reading →
There seems to be a misconception out there that having a stay at home husband is some kind of pinnacle of feminist achievement. You go out, focus on your rewarding job, come home to slippers warmed, the paper and a brandy while your hubby gets dinner ready and bathes the kids. I don't want to... Continue Reading →
My life seems to be a juxtaposition of multiple contradictions, which I am constantly trying to reconcile. One such apparent contradiction is my commitments to both Christianity and feminism. Now, feminist theologians will say this isn't necessarily a contradiction, and I tend to agree. But the reality is, in both Christian and feminist circles you... Continue Reading →
Throwntogetherness 