Understanding and solving intractable resource governance problems.
While I’m pretty organised and systematic in the way I do things, I always run the risk of thinking “wow, that’s a neat project and one I should pursue” without much regard for whether I have the bandwidth to actually work on something and function normally. This has been happening to me this semester (Fall […]
– November 14, 2017
Even though I travel just about every week, I’m never very good at determining how many articles I can realistically read, or how many words I will be able to write. But I always use a time-based approach to my research. How much work can I do in the next hour? The next 30 minutes? […]
– October 5, 2017
While edited volumes present a relatively easy choice for a reader (“oh, I’ll just read the chapters that I like/need/want”), non-edited volumes (authored books, be it single-author or coauthored) are a much more different challenge. Skipping chapters may result in missing key parts of the manuscript and overall argument. Luckily, this isn’t always the case, […]
– September 29, 2017
Frequently, academics and students alike have to read entire books. To review, to prepare for doctoral comprehensive examinations, as part of a course, etc. I am well aware that our time is terribly scarce, and we are often overbooked. Yet we still need to read those full books for course preparation, literature reviews, and even […]
– September 29, 2017
There’s an article making the rounds on the academic circuit on the importance of writing good sentences: HOW ACADEMICS SURVIVE THE WRITING GRIND: SOME ANECDOTAL ADVICE. In the article, Helen Sword encourages the reader to improve academic writing by recognizing that writing involves editing, and rewriting. I have previously blogged about the importance of valuing […]
– September 11, 2017
Before I became an academic, I worked for a consultancy company. As you may know, you bill your time (much like lawyers) by the hour. The main currency of work in consulting is your hourly rate and the number of hours you work. I didn’t really like that approach, but I ended up continuing as […]
– September 9, 2017
As I went through the first few pages, I realized that I had read Boice’s book at some point in my doctoral degree, but never paid much attention to the book, to be perfectly honest. It wasn’t until I decided that I would write up my experiences as a faculty member on the tenure-track that […]
– September 6, 2017
I have read a lot of books, and on this page I am posting the ones I’ve read and of which I’ve posted my reading notes. Note: I don’t consider these “book reviews”, nor do I post my reading notes of every single book I read. I have categorized my posts by broad area (e.g. […]
– August 26, 2017
I’ll be the first one to confess that, after having loved Helen Sword’s “Stylish Academic Writing”, I was very much looking forward to reading “Air & Light & Time & Space: How Successful Academics Write“ (also published, like her previous book, by Harvard University Press). And I’ll also be honest in voicing (like with Paul […]
– August 26, 2017
So, since I had already read Paul Silvia’s first book (How To Write A Lot) and devoured it within like an hour, and spent said hour basically yelling “YES, YES, YES, AGREED!”, I was very eager to read Paul Silvia’s second book (Write It Up!). Given that I’m leading a mega research project now, it’s […]
– August 26, 2017
As I’ve said repeatedly in my other blog posts with reading notes of academic writing books, it’s only been since early this year that I started reading books about academic writing. Not even during my PhD did I read a book that would help me write more or less, or better (or worse, as the […]
– August 26, 2017
When I was in graduate school, right about after my comprehensives, people told me that they were working 100 hours a week. Heck, I was told I needed to work 100 hours a week! There is no way in hell I can put in that much work, to be perfectly honest. While I know many […]
– August 10, 2017
I often get asked about how did I prepare for my comprehensive exams. This is the process I used, but of course, your mileage may vary. The usual disclaimers apply. I read everything on my list (Comparative Politics) doing AIC https://t.co/nVzDQtYocy – I also wrote synthetic notes on each piece — Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) […]
– August 8, 2017
Earlier today I was asked about whether my memorandums play a role in how I approach my research, and what my overall strategy is. you seem to have a pretty precise strategy, but is it summarised somewhere? what role does memos play in the overall etc? — Nicolai B. Hansen (@nbhansen) July 25, 2017 I […]
– July 25, 2017
On occasion, I write about specific discussions on research methods I am pondering, or books I am reading. I decided to create a page specific for those blog posts. On the importance of teaching robust work using qualitative methods in the social sciences. I am often frustrated by how some people seem to think qualitative […]
– July 22, 2017
There is some advice that is useful for both undergraduate and graduate students, but I find that these posts fit more the needs of Masters’ and Doctoral candidates. Obviously, if you’re looking for advice on Academic Writing, Literature Reviews, Reading Strategies, Organization and Time Management, all of these can be found in their own sub-pages. […]
– July 21, 2017
As I was leaving my office to head to the airport to fly to Mexico City for a workshop on conflicts in extractive industries, I saw the completed printout of Rafael’s dissertation sitting on my desk. Rafael is my soon-to-graduate PhD student. I felt an extreme amount of pride, while also realizing what an enormous […]
– July 15, 2017
One of the reasons people with whom I talk to gets frustrated is because they can’t find the time to write, and they ask me how I can write for 2 hours every morning. Well, turns out, some days (luckily not EVERY day), I am so busy with administrative and busywork that I just have […]
– July 14, 2017
I did a poll on what the topic of my next blog post should be, and by and large, job market advice has been the most sought after. I’ve been on both sides of the search committee table: I’ve applied to lots of academic jobs, and I’ve participated in and chaired search committees. Thus, I […]
– July 8, 2017
Even though I write a lot about Academic Writing, I rarely read books now on #AcWri. Not because I don’t want to, but because I have so much stuff that I need to write myself that I end up shunning any other type of reading other than my scholarly work. HOWEVER, I had heard so […]
– July 8, 2017
The first question I posed in the title of my blog post is one that all of my students (undergraduate and graduate) and most of my research assistants ask me: how do I know when I’ve read enough for a literature review? The answer is never clear cut, unfortunately. I am someone who loves reading, […]
– June 17, 2017
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. […]
– June 16, 2017
For my research on the politics of bottled water, I have been doing a lot of reading across different disciplines, from public health to environmental engineering, but I always come back to the excellent work of anthropologist Martha Kaplan. Professor Kaplan is at Vassar College and has done extensive work on bottled water, the local-global […]
– June 4, 2017
With the generous funding of CONACYT, Mexico’s research agency, I recently launched a project on water conflicts in Mexico. I hired a number of research assistants to my lab a couple of months ago. I am a lead PI with my co-PI being an expert in social network analysis from CentroGEO, Dr. Adriana Aguilar. One […]
– May 10, 2017
I have been asked a few times for a blog post on how to conduct a proper literature review. This is hard to do sometimes because a lot of people have different methods to do their reviews of the literature (see examples here, here, here and here). I tweeted a few of the steps I […]
– April 28, 2017
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