Take care. Be kind to yourself. And don’t be an a**hole.
For those academics who are first-generation, who are racialized, who are women, and who inhabit social locations that are traditionally unrepresented in this exclusionary space, academia is full of landmines. This is why we need academic aunties. Every month, we hear stories and advice from those who have survived and even thrived while navigating this treacherous world. And while we’re at it, we try and plant the seeds for structural transformation.
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Latest Episodes
There is a backlash to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. All around us, we see the dismantlement of various DEI initiatives including in academia. Institutions and corporations that once rushed to put out statements in support of Black Lives Matter, Landback, and other social movements for justice, now seem all too ready to abandon their initiatives...
(This is a reissue of the episode with audio issues corrected) Last week, at the end of the day on a Friday, York University announced the suspension of program admissions for 19 undergraduate programs, including Indigenous Studies, Gender Sexuality Women’s studies programs. These cuts occurred against established procedures for collegial governance, and is part of...
In academia, we assume that our value rests solely with our brains. The smarter we are, the more grants and publications we have, the more value we give to our institutions, to our fields, to our professions. What this means is that anything that gets in the way of our ability to produce is seen...
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the passage of time, about priorities, about health, about our larger purpose. I’ve been thinking, too, about intentionality. What is it that I want to do with my career? Am I doing the work that feeds me and my community? Or am I pursuing projects not because they...
If you have had to write or request an academic reference letter, which is probably all of you, then you know that there is a whole, mysterious hidden curriculum behind them. On this episode, Ethel and Nisha talk about what it’s like to write reference letters, how letter readers react to different kinds of letters,...
What is it like to go into the holiday season when grieving the loss of a loved one? How do we honour and remember people who are no longer with us? In this episode, I remember my dad, Leonides Tungohan – or Boyet – for short. With special guests, Winifred and Georgina, we talk about...
Can we reimagine new ways living and being? Our guest this week certainly did so. After suffering tremendous loss during the pandemic, including the loss of her son, Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez gave up her tenured faculty position as a full professor at UC Davis to become land steward of Remagination Farms. Located two and...
As I record this episode, it’s been about six hours after the major news networks have declared that Donald Trump will once again be the President of the United States. I’ve got a lot of feelings. I’m unsurprised, but also disheartened. I’m still processing all of this and I know you are too. So today...
We take a deep dive into the world of academic book publishing. If you’re in academia, you probably have, or want to work with a university press to publish your work. And at the heart of the book publishing process are university press editors. But many scholars don’t know what it is that editors do,...
Over the months, we have felt compelled to focus episodes on the ongoing genocide in Gaza, as well as on the implications here via the repression of solidarity work. While the brutality of the Israeli state extends back decades and decades to the Nakba, by the time this episode is released, it would be a...