How I held it together and reorganized my book manuscript without being reduced to an embarrassing mess (and other lies)
“Oh crap.” I thought, for the six hundred millionth time since I had opened my overdue manuscript. Other common thoughts included: “This is total crap.” “Did I write this crap?” … Continue reading
Six things I wish I had known before editing my first collection
I am currently working on the introduction to The Handbook of Diverse Economies with the wonderful Katherine Gibson. It is the last chapter of our 58 chapter handbook, and, as … Continue reading
Making my own life-work manifesto
Lately I have been feeling very disillusioned with the academic life. I mean, I’ve always intellectually known that our reach is often short, our work ignored and overlooked, and our … 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 … Continue reading
Blogging by phone
So Boochani wrote his award winning book on WhatsApp. And I have been blogging so irregularly: firstly because I have way too many writing deadlines and even when I have … Continue reading
Three Words 2018: Less, Dwell, Write
In the last few years I have been choosing some focus words for each year, rather than a New Year’s Resolution. In 2018, after reflecting on the words and things … Continue reading
An article six years in the making…
I am just so ridiculously pleased to finally have this article out. I first presented the material that became this article in July 2011 in Sydney, Australia. I have … Continue reading
Be gone, cruel voices
I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this. I’m thinking of when you have something important to do, to say, but become paralysed by your uncertainty about your ability — … Continue reading
Five things I learned while editing my thesis into a book
It has been some time now since I published the posts on writing your book proposal for an academic book coming out of your thesis (see also this and this). … Continue reading
Slow, painful, rewrite #9
I’m guessing about the #9, actually. I’m pretty sure I’ve completely rewritten this paper more than nine times, it’s just nine for this title. But for what it’s worth, I’m … Continue reading
Thinking-with, Dissenting-within
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 … Continue reading
Vulnerability and Learning to be Affected
I’ve been struggling with an article for a long time. This piece of writing has evolved through 5 or 6 complete revisions and framings (and many, many more versions), including … Continue reading
How to do slow reading
My previous post ‘slow scholarship starts with slow reading’ prompted some questions around slow reading. What do I really mean by slow reading, and how do we do it? It … Continue reading
Writing your Book Proposal II: What happens after submitting your proposal?
After submitting your proposal, it’s time for the waiting game. It will go to peer review, then you will need to respond, then it might go before a board, all … Continue reading
Writing a book proposal I: From concept to submission
Publishing an academic book is a bit different from publishing a novel, I’m told. All I can do is tell you the process I went through, and offer suggestions on … Continue reading
Turning your PhD into a book
As I was racing to the submission finish line with my PhD thesis in August 2012, I constantly doubted whether certain sections were ‘done’ or ‘good enough’. One of the … Continue reading
Writing for Research II: Writing as an iterative process
Yesterday, I wrote about writing as a learned skill. Today we move on to thinking about writing as an iterative process. One of the biggest mistakes that graduate students make … Continue reading
Writing for Research I: Writing is a learned skill
I recently gave a class on writing for research to a wonderful group of health science postgraduate students. It was a great opportunity to gather some of my ideas … Continue reading
You Won’t Believe How These New Zealand Undergraduates Email Their Lecturers
My tongue-in-cheek clickbait title is meant to illustrate via awkward engagement how inappropriate the norms of social media are to academia. Nowhere is this more obvious than when students try … Continue reading
On writing: Spew drafts in the Phd process
I have recently been working through a book with some PhD students in my department. The book is Alison B Miller’s Finish Your Dissertation Once and For All! How to … Continue reading
My Community Economies Work
I regularly update my profile on the Community Economies website. If you are interested in reading more of my work in this area, see my profile.