In Molecular Capture: The Animation of Biology (University of Minnesota Press, 2021), Adam Nocek, Assistant Professor in the Philosophy of Technology and Science and Technology Studies at Arizona State University, investigates the collusion between entertainment and scientific visualization in the case of molecular animation. “The very same tools that were invented to animate a character like Shrek or Nemo are now being applied to set in motion protein domains and cellular processes.” Opening wi...
Aug 17, 2022•56 min•Ep. 10
For this episode of How To Be Wrong, I speak with George Styles, a biochemist and author of the book Contemplation. George is also what we describe these days as an “influencer”—although as we discuss he objects to that label—on social media, with over 37 thousand followers on Twitter. His approach to Twitter is novel in that he focuses on asking probing questions designed to generate discussion, which at times become rather heated. Our conversation moves through topics related to how Twitter is...
Aug 10, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 10
Listen to this interview with Jo Mackiewicz, professor of rhetoric and professional communication at Iowa State University, and with Isabelle Thompson, emerita professor of technical and professional communication and former coordinator of the English Center at Auburn University. We talk about their book Talk about Writing: The Tutoring Strategies of Experienced Writing Center Tutors (Routledge, 2018) and writing. Jo Mackiewicz : "The more I think about writing center interactions and write book...
Aug 09, 2022•2 hr 30 min•Ep. 78
Listen to this interview of Nicholas Rowe, researcher and educator based in Finland. We talk his book The Realities of Completing a PhD: How to Plan for Success (Routledge, 2021) and about what needs to change. Nicholas Rowe : "Writing for different purposes, for different audiences is a huge skill, because people are going to need this communication skill in their research proposal when they present their ideas to advisors, but also in their publications when they share their ideas with colleag...
Aug 08, 2022•2 hr 36 min•Ep. 77
A special opportunity to hear from Sara Custer, editor of The Campus (Times Higher Education), about the role of journalism and reporting in higher education. Avi and Sara cover topics ranging from the role of media in increasing cross-institution collaboration and sharing during the pandemic to how universities can do a better job supporting their junior scholars. Also, don't miss out on the opportunity to learn how you can publish in Times Higher Education yourself! Avi Staiman is the founder ...
Aug 05, 2022•44 min•Ep. 74
Paul A. Djupe, Anand Edward Sokhey, and Amy Erica Smith, The Knowledge Polity: Teaching and Research in the Social Sciences (Oxford UP, 2022) explores a more holistic understanding of knowledge production in the social sciences, moving beyond the publication process often required by those in tenure/tenure-track positions to thinking about the role of community in the construction of knowledge. Political Scientists Paul A. Djupe (Denison University), Anand Edward Sokhey (University of Colorado-B...
Aug 04, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 614
Listen to this interview of Vivian Kao, Associate Professor of Composition and Coordinator of the First-Year Writing Program, and Julia Kiernan, Assistant Professor of Communication and Coordinator of Technical and Professional Communication — both at Lawrence Technological University, Michigan. It's more than just hot air — we talk about their STEAM, and their book Writing STEAM: Composition, STEM, and a New Humanities (Routledge, 2022). Vivian Kao : "Writing is really central to the project of...
Aug 02, 2022•2 hr 31 min•Ep. 76
The International Association of Genocide Scholars is a global, interdisciplinary, non-partisan organization that seeks to further research and teaching about the nature, causes, and consequences of genocide, and advance policy studies on genocide prevention. The Association, founded in 1994, meets regularly to consider comparative research, important new work, case studies, the links between genocide and other human rights violations, and prevention and punishment of genocide. The Association h...
Jul 29, 2022•23 min•Ep. 74
Welcome to The Academic Life! In this episode you’ll hear about: Dr. Laura Portwood-Stacer’s own experience getting her first two academic books published. An overview of different kinds of editors who will be part of shepherding your book to publication. What a developmental editor does. Why might you need to hire one. Her advice to book editors and their clients. Our guest is: Dr. Laura Portwood-Stacer, who is a scholar and academic. She wrote a book based on her dissertation and many scholarl...
Jul 28, 2022•57 min•Ep. 115
Rebecca Colesworthy talks about the university press and how its workings should be demystified, what authors should keep in mind when they pitch their books, and what university presses do for the state of academic labor. Rebecca Colesworthy (she/her) is senior acquisitions editor at SUNY Press. Her areas of acquisition include literary studies, women’s and gender studies, queer studies, Latin American and Iberian studies, Latinx studies, African American studies, Indigenous studies, and educat...
Jul 25, 2022•21 min•Ep. 87
80,000 Hours provides research and support to help students and graduates switch into careers that effectively tackle the world’s most pressing problems. Benjamin Todd is the president and co-founder of 80,000 Hours. He managed the organisation while it grew from a lecture, to a student society, to the organization it is today. He also helped to get effective altruism started in Oxford in 2011. Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network (Twitter: @caleb_zakarin). Learn more a...
Jul 25, 2022•34 min•Ep. 73
The protests of summer 2020 led to long-overdue reassessments of the legacy of racism and white supremacy in both American academe and cultural life more generally. But while universities have been willing to rename some buildings and schools or grapple with their role in the slave trade, no one has yet asked the most uncomfortable question: Does academic freedom extend to racist professors? It's Not Free Speech: Race, Democracy, and the Future of Academic Freedom (Johns Hopkins University Press...
Jul 25, 2022•39 min•Ep. 143
How can we get our articles in Asian studies published? What criteria should we use in selecting what journals to target? On what basis do journal editors make decisions on what articles to publish? How should prospective authors deal with harsh and even contradictory reviewer reports? In this special double-length summer podcast, based on an online event convened by NIAS in 2021, two editors of Asian studies journals discuss the challenges of publishing high-quality articles in the field, in a ...
Jul 15, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 138
Laura Portwood-Stacer talks with Kim about book proposals. Laura is a consultant for academic authors. Her book, titled, appropriately, The Book Proposal Book (Princeton UP, 2021), is a how-to-guide for writing an outstanding book proposal. Through her business, Manuscript Works, Laura runs courses, workshops, and provides editorial assistance, to help academics navigate the world of publishing. Enrollment for her next “Book Proposal Accelerator Course” opens on Jan. 3, at 9am PST. Here’s the li...
Jul 07, 2022•14 min•Ep. 75
Welcome to The Academic Life! In this episode you’ll hear about: Why Robert Ramaswamy wants to see your revised dissertation submitted for publication. What makes a revised dissertation ready to submit to a press. How to choose mentor texts to put in your proposal. Signs that you might not want to turn your dissertation into a book, and what to do instead. The editorial complexities of saying “no” to a book proposal. And a discussion about the new University of Wyoming Press imprint Our guest is...
Jul 07, 2022•52 min•Ep. 111
Today’s guest is Whitney Trettien whose book Cut/Copy/Paste: Fragments from the History of Bookwork was published through the University of Minnesota Press in 2022. Trettien is a Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, and researches the history of the book spanning print and digital technologies. Cut/Copy/Paste explores makerspaces and collaboratories where paper media were cut up and reassembled into radical, bespoke publications. The book is complemented with a wide array of r...
Jun 27, 2022•38 min•Ep. 152
Jason Prevost, coordinating Chair of the Publication Ethics Committee, and Senior Acquisitions Editor at Brill joins Avi Staiman, CEO of Academic Language Experts, to discuss how publishers handle ethical issues such as plagiarism, questions of authorship, and even fraudulent results. Hear how Jason dealt with a senior professor who refused to credit authorship to his Ph.D. student despite the fact that he wrote a considerable amount of his book. Also, learn how publishers go about retracting pr...
Jun 24, 2022•47 min•Ep. 72
Plan S: the open access initiative that changed the face of global research. Robert-Jan Smits and Rachael Pells's book Plan S for Shock: Science. Shock. Solution. Speed. (Ubiquity Press, 2022) tells the story of open access publishing - why it matters now, and for the future. In a world where information has never been so accessible, and answers are available at the touch of a fingertip, we are hungrier for the facts than ever before - something the Covid-19 crisis has brought to light. And yet,...
Jun 21, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 123
Hear from Professor Chris Gerteis, director of the International Publishing Initiative at Tokyo University. Avi and Chris have a fascinating discussion about the role of English language publication in universities and colleges in Asia and his work to assist faculty to publish their books with respected university publishers. Chris shares some of the unexpected hurdles in helping Japanese scholars to publish their work and how reviewers can be more open and understanding to different writing sty...
Jun 06, 2022•41 min•Ep. 70
Listen to this interview of Jo Mackiewicz, Professor of Rhetoric and Professional Communication at Iowa State University and editor of the Journal of Business and Technical Communication. We talk about welds that hold and about sentences that stand. Jo Mackiewicz : "Oh, I'd definitely agree that people can be motivated in what they're learning when they appreciate the art of it. I mean, for instance in welding, you need to put in a certain number of hours in order to have your mind and your body...
Jun 06, 2022•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 71
Welcome to The Academic Life! In this episode you’ll hear about: Why Dr. Marshall Poe left a tenured professorship to create the New Books Network How his own experience with dyslexia inspired his book-talk podcasts, Why he wouldn’t want to go back to being a professor now, Common misconceptions—plus some good advice—about starting a podcast The NBN’s role in democratizing education and in supporting academic presses. Our guest is: Dr. Marshall Poe, who is a historian, writer, podcaster, and edi...
Jun 02, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 106
Listen to this interview of Julia Molinari, lecturer in professional academic communication at The Open University (UK) and independent researcher. We talk her book What Makes Writing Academic: Rethinking Theory for Practice (Bloomsbury, 2022) and about the things people use academic writing for. Julia Molinari : "We need to ensure that teachers of academic writing have access to scholarship and can do the research that they need to do in order to sensitize themselves to the different ways of co...
May 31, 2022•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 69
Should academic scholars trust machine translation for the publication of their academic articles? In this episode, Avi Staiman and Prof. Ana Guerberof Arenas discuss the evolution of machine translation and the most recent developments in machine translation technology. Ana shares her insight on the potential pitfalls of relying on machine translation for unpublished manuscripts. She also shares the results of her recent study on the advantages of human translation for creative and literary tex...
May 30, 2022•45 min•Ep. 66
ADST has the world’s largest collection of U.S. diplomatic oral history. They have over 2,500 oral histories at ADST.org Susan Rockwell Johnson is the president of ADST since November 2016. She is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service (retired) with over three decades of distinguished service in a broad range of bilateral and multilateral assignments in and out of the State Department. Margery B. Thompson directs ADST’s book-related programs, advises diplomats and others on editing and p...
May 25, 2022•35 min•Ep. 68
Today I talked to Sean Guillory. Sean did something pretty remarkable (and hard): He started a successful academic podcast. It's called the SRB Podcast and deals with Russian and Eurasian affairs. In the interview, Sean explains how he did it, how he does it, and his current project, a wonderful narrative podcast called Teddy Goes to the USSR. I highly recommend you subscribe to the SRB Podcast and Teddy Goes to the USSR. You can follow Sean on Twitter here: @seansrussiablog. Sean Guillory is th...
May 24, 2022•41 min•Ep. 67
Founded in 1884 and incorporated by Congress in 1889 for the promotion of historical studies, the American Historical Association provides leadership for the discipline and promotes the critical role of historical thinking in public life. The Association defends academic freedom, develops professional standards, supports innovative scholarship and teaching, and helps to sustain and enhance the work of historians. As the largest membership association of professional historians in the world (over...
May 24, 2022•2 hr 39 min•Ep. 65
Listen to this interview of Roslyn Petelin, Honorary Associate Professor at the University of Queensland, Australia. We talk about her book How Writing Works: A Field Guide to Effective Writing (Routledge, 2021) writing well and knowing why. Roslyn Petelin : "My book caters for all kinds of writers: student writers, creative writers, technical writers, journalistic writers, corporate writers, all of whom need to be able to write well, write successfully, for either personal or corporate credibil...
May 20, 2022•28 min•Ep. 62
Listen to this interview of Dave Harris, a writing coach who uses principles from design to help authors develop writing practices. We talk about his book, Literature Review and Research Design: A Guide to Effective Research Practice (Routledge, 2019), and the ongoing conversation that is research. Dave Harris : "And one of the important elements of thinking of your research as a conversation with your community of scholars is that the gaps in the literature are, to some extent, the things that ...
May 18, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 62
Listen to this interview of Zen Faulkes, instructor at the School of Interdisciplinary Science, McMaster University, Canada. We talk about his book Better Posters: Plan, Design and Present an Academic Poster (Pelagic Publishing, 2021) and efficiency. Zen Faulkes : "Any time that you're very early on in a project, you'll have tendency (as I call it) to democratize data. You want to have all the data be important. You think everything's important when you're just at the start of a project. But whe...
May 16, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 63
The American Association of Geographers (AAG) is a non-profit scientific and educational society aimed at advancing the understanding, study, and importance of geography and related fields. Its headquarters is located in Washington, D.C. The organization was founded on December 29, 1904, in Philadelphia. As of 2020, the association has more than 10,000 members, from nearly 100 countries. Emily T. Yeh is Professor of Geography at the University of Colorado at Boulder and President of the AAG. Cal...
May 12, 2022•33 min•Ep. 61
