PhDiva Liz is now a tenure track Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon in the Departments of Chemical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering! After preparing for the job market, how do you prepare for the anxieties of negotiation and starting the job? In this first part, Liz talks to PhDiva Xine about the rapid professional growth that can only happen through this major career transition.
Are Asians apolitical? What is the term "Asian American" anyway? PhDiva Xine talks to Rachel Kuo of the Asian American Feminist Collective about racial identity in online spaces and histories of Asian American political organizing. Rachel gives us insight into the latest wave of digital activism in the Asian diaspora galvanized by Black Lives Matter. How can Asian American feminists work in antiracist solidarity with other peoples of colour rather than colluding with white supremacy or falling i...
Grad school is trash for POC. The whisper campaign of academic trauma. Ciarra Jones's essays went viral in 2018, drawing from her experiences during her MA at Harvard Divinity School. This is not just about white antiBlackness or white fear about speaking out, but also how BIPOC students can internalize their own oppression and undermine others under the guise of care. PhDiva Xine learns from Ciarra about the hope, grace, and love those in progressive circles can get from faith practices like qu...
Who was actually scandalized by the 'scandal' about rich people using their money to get their questionably gifted kids into elite American higher education? PhDiva Xine discusses structural inequalities in US and UK higher education with Maryam Toorawa who works in Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion and whose experiences span Cornell, Bryn Mawr, Oxford, Yale, SOAS. Initiatives to combat inequalities are vastly different on either side of the Anglophone Atlantic -- and the level of recognition a...
It's application season! PhDivas Dr. Liz Wayne and Dr. Xine Yao share strategies for applying to graduate school in the humanities and STEM -- and how to make an informed decision about whether to apply at all. A how-to advice episode that reveals disciplinary differences amidst the shared stresses of the application process.
Why are the PhDivas interested in tarot cards and the art of divination? PhDivas Liz and Xine separately delved into tarot: this is their first full conversation about their practices of self-care. The classic Western deck has been reimagined by disenfranchised peoples. Xine draws from her research about the importance of QTPOC tarot, especially the Asian American Tarot and Dusk || Onyx Melanated Tarot for the African diaspora. Liz the scientist challenges the dichotomy between tarot, forms of b...
Poetry can be for everyone! PhDiva Xine interviews 2017 Green College Writer-in-Residence Anne Simpson about dying well, pedagogy, and publishing -- and lifting heavy weights as a feminist act. Winner of prestigious Canadian literature awards like the Griffin, Anne has published poetry, novels, and essays. Featuring brief segments with Tiara Kerr (economics) and Wes Yocom (law)as glimpses into how a poetry workshop environment can be enriching regardless of your disciplinary background. How can ...
How can we address global inequalities in this era of climate change? What disciplines, methods can we use – and how can we do this research ethically, collaboratively? UBC Forestry PhD student Saori Ogura is working with Indigenous peoples in Zimbabwe and the Himalayas to support their knowledges about traditional nutritious crops as a counter to monocultural cash crops like cardamom. Saori tells PhDiva Xine about her research journey from Japan to Berkeley to UNESCO involving agricultural scie...
Here come the trolls! Degrees, peer-reviewed publications, respect in the field -- markers of academic respectability do not shield scholars, especially BIPOC women, when people don't want to hear what we have to say. Remember PhDiva Xine's naivete in our previous episode? A month after recording, she tweeted a critique about Asian American appropriation of Blackness tied to the erasure of antiBlack, antiLatinx racisms when the media takes the Harvard affirmative action case as solely about anti...
From ABD to the verge of becoming faculty: PhDivas Liz and Xine have been doing this podcast for 3 years strong! We had no idea what impact, good or bad, this might have on our lives as junior scholars. In this episode we reflect upon public scholarship from scicomm to public humanities to TED Talks. We're proud to build a public stage to help raise other women in academia -- and you can join in too! (Enjoy Xine’s naivete before listening to part 2.) Images taken from a gif by Libby VanderPloeg:...
Geosciences are the least diverse of all STEM fields. But is it enough to track statistics about gender and race given the discipline's colonial, masculinist history? Quantitative scientists experiment with qualitative methods in order to examine experiences at a Canadian geoscience conference. PhDiva Xine interviews marine biologist Sara Cannon and fluvial geomorphologist Leonora King (UBC Geography) about their paper that tracked posters vs. panels, behaviour at talks and on panels, and the di...
The 1970 student massacre at Kent State is iconic in the United States and beyond. Days before the 2018 anniversary, at least 65 students at Aligarh Muslim University in India were brutalized by the police for peacefully protesting the police dismissal -- without charges -- of the armed Hindu nationalists who had threatened their campus. PhDiva Xine talks with Wajiha Mehdi (PhD student in Social Justice at UBC) to raise Western awareness of the protests in India by students, farmers, and many ot...
PhDiva Xine is moving to London, England as a #NewProf! Liz and Xine catch up after an exhausting spring to talk about Xine's new position as Lecturer at University College London, differences between STEM and humanities public outreach, illusions of meritocracy -- and complicated feelings to kind cliches. "I always knew you would make it." "Are you excited?"
Creating or conjuring? Junior scholars Emmanuelle Andrews and Katrina Sellinger were inspired by a public dialogue on the work of words between poet Dionne Brand and critic Christina Sharpe moderated by writer David Chariandy. Emmanuelle and Katrina co-edited a special issue of The Capilano Review extending that conversation on Blackness through their curation of essays, interviews, poetry, sculpture, and tattoo art. PhDiva Xine talks to these up-and-coming scholars at UBC about Black love, ment...
"Dead, drunk, or dancing": Kavelina SnowGiggles Torres (Yup’ik/Iñupiaq/Athabascan) seeks to challenge the usual media representations of Indigenous peoples. PhDiva Xine Yao interviews Kavelina about her work as a writer and filmmaker selected for the Sundance NativeLab Fellowship. What can narrative do that documentaries can't? Yugumalleq/Shades of Life (2014) is currently on exhibit at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her play "Something in the Living Room" will be performed spring 2018...
Who gets cited in your discipline? What if exploring that question led to death threats? "Why these professors are warning against promoting the work of straight, white men" is the Washington Post's take on Drs. Carrie Mott(Rutgers) and Daniel Cockayne (UWaterloo)'s peer-reviewed article on the politics of citation. The alt-right was not happy. PhDiva Xine talks to these feminist geographers about the dangers of public scholarship, academic vs. mainstream media timelines of production and attent...
Race is messy, literally and figuratively, as Professor Brigitte Fielder (Wisconsin-Madison) argues in her project on the non-linear transferability of race in nineteenth-century America. Shakespeare's Othello in America became a minstrel play warning against the dangers of miscegenation -- what does it mean with Othello's blackface makeup begrimes Desdemona? At the 2017 conference of the American Studies Association, PhDiva Xine chats with Brigitte about anti-racist mentoring, pedagogy, and col...
How do children of immigrants survive in the wake of diaspora? Punjabi is Canada's 5th most spoken language. As a PhD student in Asian Studies at UBC, Kiran Sunar reads, translates, and speaks multiple languages as a part of reclaiming Punjabi literary forms from Orientalism. Kiran and PhDiva Xine discuss Rupi Kaur and the power of Instagram poetry, disgraceful Canadian histories, and the importance of ice cream to BIPOC friendship. "How do we keep our wounded?" asks Kiran in this conversation a...
How can we empower teen girls of color? PhDivas Liz and Xine talk to Eden and Ellisa Oyewo about how their C.O.R.E. work supports girls in those formative years before university. These sisters from Indiana collaborate from different cities and careers (engineering vs. fashion) to create and run C.O.R.E. (Creating Opportunity to Reach Empowerment), an online magazine and on-site programming at schools to bring career resources, financial planning, fashion tips, and relationship advice catered to...
800,000 undocumented young people in the US will be endangered if the DACA(Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program ends. PhDivas Liz and Xine interview DREAMer Dory Castillo, an amazing undergrad furthering children's science education who hopes to become a physicist herself. But because of her undocumented status, she has to live with the threat of deportation to a country she's never even visited. From Dory's dreams about studying fluid mechanics and her love of teaching, we turn to di...
After the events of Charlottesville what has changed or SHOULD change for the start of the school year? How do we navigate family legacies if you're descended from the enslaved or have Confederate ancestors? What if these issues are in your face on campus? These debates hit close to home for PhDiva Liz and Dr. Jill Spivey Caddell at UNC Chapel Hill where the Confederate statue Silent Sam stands. Topics include Jill's research on Civil War monuments, revisionist histories, #NoConfederate, and the...
What happens when your project fails? Dr. Erica Pratt, researcher at University of Texas MD Cancer Medical Center, talks about the bias against discussing negative results in science and the struggle to succeed as a nontraditional student. If you aren't what people expect a scientist to look like AND are rather modest, you need mentors to go the extra mile as coaches. We discuss Erica's trajectory from her undergrad at Carnegie Mellon, which required all undergrads in the new biomedical engineer...
Katti Horng's path to studying HIV in the combined DVM/PhD degree at UC Davis began with a Chinese tradition for babies: infants are presented with objects symbolizing different professions to see what their futures will hold. PhDivas Xine and Liz talk to Katti about cow rectums, animal rights vs. animal welfare, and the difference between the cultures of professional and graduate degrees. We get a new perspective on sexism: even though women are now the majority in veterinary medicine, we learn...
Student protests inspired by Black Lives Matter have swept across American universities. What did these undergraduate activists want? PhDiva Dr. Xine Yao interviews Kristi Carey, one of the leaders of the 2014-5 protests at Colgate University. Kristi and her fellow women of color activists organized in the wake of Michael Brown's killing to draw attention to systemic problems on campus and to demand real change from the university. Sit-ins, death threats, candle light vigils -- what has happened...
Summer vacation: when academics look forward to spending quality time... working on their research. Over the "holiday" weekend Liz and Xine talk about structuring their time and the unexpected emotional labour that comes when you do take a "break" only to frantically play catch-up on your personal life. We discuss the idea of breaks in a wider sense as well: figuring out strategic vulnerability, burning out because of social media, allowing ourselves to ask for help. How can we take a break from...
To decolonize or Indigenize the university? Sereana Naepi, an Indigenous Pacific Islander, takes on this question through her doctoral studies in Education at UBC on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Musqueam people. PhDiva Xine interviews Sereana about Education as a discipline unto itself and how she brings Indigenous methodologies into her work on Indigenous women's experiences as higher ed staff. As a Fijian scholar from New Zealand, Sereana explains how her community ...
If you survived the academic job market, what comes next? Xine catches up with Dr. Nadia Chernyak who will be tenure-track at UC Irvine in the Cognitive Science department. Nadia does amazing research on cognitive and moral development in children, but as it turns out, nothing truly prepares you to be a #newprof. What is involved in setting up a lab, which could be described as running your own small startup?
We want YOU to help #SavetheNEH. If Congress passes this budget, the National Endowment for the Humanities will be eliminated in 2018. What do we, as a society, stand to lose for savings of a mere .006% of the federal budget? Liz interviews Xine about the devastating impact this would have on the cultural, historical, artistic, and ethical lives of communities of every size everywhere in the US. The PhDivas share the specifics of the "human" in the "humanities." Xine put out a call for stories f...
Conferences are like icebergs: there's a lot going on below the surface. We give you insight on the secret life of academic conferences. First, Liz and Xine cover the obvious considerations about STEM and humanities conferences. But in the majority of this episode we discuss the hidden dynamics: institutional privilege, social ecosystems, and how cliques make visible professional power dynamics. In some ways, academic conferences can be like a teen movie! You enter as an overwhelmed junior perso...
Here's the inside scoop on #TED2017 in Vancouver from TED Fellow and PhDiva Dr. Liz Wayne who delivered a TED Talk about her research on cancer drug delivery. Xine interviews Liz about the application process, preparation process, and life-changing experience of the TED Conference. What is it like to take science communication to the next level? What entrepreneurs and creatives did Liz rub shoulders with? Congratulations to Liz on continuing to develop her black excellence! Liz's TED Talk was hi...
