Thoughts and things

Academic emergent strategies^*

I find it important to incorporate my personal values into my daily work. Academia is a historically elitist and exclusionary system, and many of the standard demands of our career are antithetical to the reason we sought this position — to build a range of interpretations and collective understanding of the world (or the Universe, a lofty goal for the astrophysicists). Here are some practices I try to implement into my work as a scientist, in order to show up fully and hopefully contribute towards small cultural shifts in my local environment.

I am nowhere near an expert on Making Academia Amazing and Inclusive for Everyone, and these thoughts are not necessarily unique or revolutionary. They are bite size practices that have given me joy or relief in contrast to the outcome of competition and sacrifice often asked by academia, and so they contribute to little increments of making this career more personally sustainble.

Aside from my personal experience, I find inspiration through connections and conversations with others in this field, as well as the work of organizers and authors addressing social justice and community care. These include texts such as

• Beyond Survival (edited by Ejeris Dixon and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2020)
• Higher Expectations: How to Survive Academia, Make it Better for Others, and Transform the University (Roberta Hawkins and Leslie Kern, 2024)
• Emergent Strategy (adrienne maree brown, 2017)
• Practicing New Worlds (Andrea J. Ritchie, 2023)

* As described by adrienne maree brown and Andrea Ritchie who write about emergent strategies, we can begin to envision a new world by exercising shifts in how we do things, rather than trying to change from top-down the systems that we are a part of.

1. Create room for our full authentic selves to show up in the workplace.

We are much more than our science, yet we tend to leave these parts of ourselves at the door when we step into the office. Inevitably, our personal lives affect how we show up, what support we need at various times to reach our goals and deadlines, our capacity for focus and meetings, and ultimately our ability to do the science we are here for in the first place. Allow introductions in group meetings and conferences to include personal truths. This is of course optional, and people should choose what or if they’d like to share. What is one of your goals outside of science? What has been the best or most challenging part of your week? When we know our peers more closely, we open the opportunity to relate to each other and connect in ways that enhance our science identity.

This sentiment extends to collaborators and visitors. I have found that introducing seminar speakers beyond their CV (with any personal information they opt to share) helps to build personal connection in the room. Rather than serving as a distraction, people in a more connected audience may pay more attention and retain a clearer memory of the event.

2. Present work in progress.

There is a culture of gatekeeping our results in progress or rushing to finish a work before a conference in order to claim it as our own. But we also know that our ideas do not develop in isolation, and conversations with each other build our collective understanding. I find it refreshing to share and learn about work in progress with those outside my collaborator network. This adds transparency to the way we approach our research and allows for incorporating diverse interpretations of our results. Some people will choose to scoop your work anyway. Regardless, all of our work would benefit from sharing ideas and data, and working collectively with less urgency.
Given that the current system demands that we produce work in the name of our institution, of course there is a balance to how much we can do this.

3. Embrace many modes of contribution.

The majority of our work falls under the umbrella of project management (more like projectS with a big S!), which entails a set of skills that we are not explicitly taught within the standard curriculum. Think: coordinating large scale projects with collaborators all over the world, advising student projects, scheduling proper time for grant writing, organizing an effective conference. There is an often unrealistic expectation for all of us to be experts at a variety of things, while in reality, we can embrace our strengths and work with others to build stronger networks. For example, here are some skills that may resonate with you or that you may have noticed in your peers:

• placing research questions into the bigger picture
• getting into the nitty gritty details of a derivation
• developing organizational structures for data, software, project notes
• communicating your methodology, findings, and caveats to different audiences
• running effective meetings with insightful discussion, progress, collective input, and not taking too long (!)
4. Practice a nonexclusionary, nonhierarchical collaboration structure.

This applies to the science we do: Those with less experience in a field can arrive with a fresh perspective and challenge us to revisit fundamental questions that we take for granted.
And how we do the science: Iterative feedback from all group members, including students, in how a meeting structure or class works for them can improve these events for everyone. Just because a thing has worked in the past does not mean it will always be the best option.

5. Integrate room for play.

Many aspects of scientific research require creativity. Contrary to the limited picture of a Totally Objective and Logical Science Guy in a Lab Coat, we ponder things we don’t understand, design ways to effectively visualize things we collect, develop innovative interpretations, draw connections, and ultimately construct ways of interpreting the world around us. (I love to consider the overlap of science and art.) Studies show that play enhances creativity, which can help us to develop novel solutions to problems. Here I define play as practicing an activity that is not focused on a particular outcome — crafting, freewriting, exploring outside. A 10 minute break before a group meeting or in the middle of a writing session can energize our busy minds, making room for new ideas. This can also overlap with the science we do: consider building physical representations of how black holes interact with gas, or brainstorming the analogy between a chorus of cicadas and an anisotropic stochastic gravitational wave background (some personal examples).

Just as our research is iterative and ever-growing, this list is also a perpetual draft that is revisited and updated over time. Currently this is a freewrite from Dec, 2024. I would love to hear from others about what supports you in your career and life balance, and how you envision a sustainable future for scientific exploration.