I know I’m privileged in that my own institution and my colleagues are very respectful of my time. They’re also extraordinarily considerate of my schedules. I am very vocal about my routines, so anybody who either follows me on Twitter or interacts with me on a regular basis know a few things about my schedule. […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– June 16, 2017
Like many political scientists, I will be descending on Chicago this week to present two papers at the Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA). I was invited by Dr. Kelly LeRoux (University of Chicago at Illinois) to give a talk to her PhD students, and we decided to make it a public lecture. I have titled […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– April 3, 2017
Most of the people who know my work in public policy theory and scholarship tend to call me what my good friend, Dr. Debora VanNijnatten (Wilfrid Laurier University) calls me, “The Policy Instruments Guy”. When I was about to start my PhD, I read the work of Dr. Kathryn Harrison (University of British Columbia) and […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– January 11, 2017
I have been living in Mexico for the better part of four years, after 20 years living in Canada. Trust me, it wasn’t an easy decision to move back. Canadians have a VERY strong sense of rule of law. I had never lived in a country where rules were so strictly followed. Drivers stop at […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– December 23, 2016
Even though I wake up every morning at 4am to start writing, launching into work sometimes takes me anywhere from 10 minutes to a solid hour. This is not uncommon. There are plenty of articles on the internet on why you should have a morning ritual, how to start your day off right, and the […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– October 14, 2016
This page is intended to collate my posts on time management, organizational skills, and workflow design. I have written about how I organize my books, my journal articles and book chapters, how I approach digital document management, and how I plan my academic and personal lives. If you’re looking for my Everything Notebook™ posts, click […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– July 14, 2016
This page is dedicated to suggestions I provide to improve scholars, professors and students’ writing. These tips have worked for me, and I hope they will work for you! Producing New Text Writing a paper (going from generating ideas to finishing and editing manuscript) This post should be useful to those who are trying to […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– July 14, 2016
I spent this week at an authors’ workshop for a book on polycentricity and a special issue of a journal. This workshop was convened by Andreas Thiel, Dustin Garrick and Bill Blomquist, and generously partially funded by a grant that supports Andreas’ work. We were hosted at a familiar space for many of us, the […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– December 19, 2015
The courses I teach tend to be very practical and applied. My teaching philosophy is founded on helping my students acquire employable skills. Writing solid, robust, concise and easy-to-read analytical summaries should be an acquired tool that they then can transfer to other fields. Politicians, bureaucrats and high-level people in government that I’ve talked to […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– August 8, 2015
I was going to write this blog post a long time ago, every since Ryan Briggs (Virginia Tech) alerted me to these posts by Tom Pepinsky (Cornell University), Ken Opalo (Stanford University) and Chris Blattman (Columbia University), but then the “worm wars” debate happened on Twitter, I got pulled into it (inadvertently and unwillingly) and […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– August 1, 2015
Last July 1st I celebrated my first 3 years with CIDE (Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas, the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics). I joined CIDE on July 1st, 2012, after spending 2006-2012 teaching in the Department of Political Science at The University of British Columbia. I have extremely fond memories from UBC […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– July 11, 2015
This year, I’ve been teaching public policy analysis in continuing education (diploma) courses at CIDE. This is a nice (and refreshing) change from undergraduate and graduate teaching because it forces me to design simpler ways to teach people who already have their degrees and who need “just an upgrading/refresh crash course”. It is, however, a […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– March 4, 2015
One of the first things other academics ask me is “why are you interested in toilets?” For the vast majority of people, the biological function of waste excretion is an after thought, an activity that nobody wants to talk about, and often times, the mere thought of talking about shit grosses them out. I am, […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– November 16, 2014
In a lovely conversation with my niece (who is studying Political Science at a prestigious US university), she said that she admired professors for all the writing and multitasking that we do (teaching, research, service to the university, to their own disciplines, and that she was impressed that I wake up at 4 in the […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– October 25, 2014
As I’ve noted elsewhere on my blog, I am very much far from perfect. Despite my ability to speed-read, touch-type about 100 wpm and have quasi-eidetic memory, I can (and often do) procrastinate. Having a very rigorous routine (as established on my weekly schedule) reduces distractions quite a lot. But when I do get distracted, […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– September 22, 2014
While I’m someone who is open to all theoretical frameworks and methodological styles (quantitative, qualitative, spatial), much of my research uses neoinstitutionalism and institutional theories. I’m considered a neoinstitutionalist, by all measures. I study rules and norms. I strongly believe that analyzing rule formation, maturation and erosion can help us understand how resources can be […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– April 27, 2014
While the vast majority of my research is in water governance, and more specifically on wastewater and sanitation, I have always had an interest in solid waste. In fact, at the beginning of my PhD, I was more interested (and did more research) on hazardous waste and municipal garbage than I did on wastewater. In […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– April 20, 2014
Much of the neoinstitutional and rational choice theory work that I’ve read has focused on incentive structures, rules and how these shape norms, behaviours and attitude changes in individuals. My research has examined behavioural change, but mostly from the perspective of industrial factory owners and their decision-making processes when confronted with tight environmental regulation. In […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– February 27, 2014
I often write and tweet about my quest for that elusive notion of balance. Not only in academic life (e.g. the tricky process of juggling research, teaching and service, or the need to work in many multiple research and writing projects so that I can get stuff published in time for, you know, tenure reviews […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– December 14, 2013
Given how often my Top 10 Tips for Academic Writing get retweeted, promoted and Googled, you would have thought I would have jumped at the possibility of doing #AcWriMo (Academic Writing Month, which happens in November) again. After all, I have done it in previous years, and learned a lot from doing it last year. […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– November 30, 2013
I got braces for the first time in my life last month. You may wonder “how does getting braces relate to Dr. Raul Pacheco-Vega’s academic life?“. There’s a very simple response to that: In 2013, I decided to become the first priority in my life, both professional and personal. Out of context, undergoing teeth surgery […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– January 17, 2013
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