Understanding and solving intractable resource governance problems.
Given my physical and personality traits (I get tired incredibly fast, have enormous amounts of energy, love focusing on a broad variety of tasks and projects), I have designed my days in such a way that I can focus on doing the stuff I need to get done and still maintain some degree of sanity […]
– February 3, 2014
2012 and 2013 were great for my research in that I got to create new datasets, explore new field sites, undertake new fieldwork, and write, write, and do even more writing. The second part of the semester, though, was simply insane. I travelled to 9 countries, presented papers in Ireland, Uruguay, Portugal, Canada, the United […]
– January 12, 2014
The end of the year was even more hectic than I thought it would be, so I really didn’t have much time to actually sit down and write what I had learned in the past semester, let alone the entire year. I started the year hitting the pavement running, so I haven’t had much time […]
– January 12, 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 […]
– December 14, 2013
Two recent pieces by Rebecca Schuman and Mark Sample have made me ponder again something I wrote about last year: what exactly are professors supposed to be teaching their students? I should begin by disclosing two facts: One, I am terrified at the job prospects of my students, both former and current, given the current […]
– December 14, 2013
One of the challenges I face as a multidisciplinary researcher who doesn’t accept the traditional, discipline-based boundaries rigidly set by traditional academic standards is to find the right balance of focus and diversification (and the right balance of writing what you want to write right now versus what you need to finish). For many years, […]
– October 27, 2013
I’m having an intense and really challenging week, one where I am feeling really conflicted. My weeks are usually like this, but this week I’m facing an interesting conundrum. I have a number of projects I need to finish off (not the least, changes to my book that I lost in the last round of […]
– October 24, 2013
This may sound trite, but I’m really thrilled that I am working at CIDE. The truth is, in the last 12 months I have received more institutional support than I had in more than a decade (both as a PhD student and as a faculty member at my previous institution). I am never shy to […]
– October 17, 2013
A lot of people have asked me “who should I follow, and which hashtags should I follow for academic content consumption”. Like any summary, there will be obviously biases, and perhaps someone overlooked, but these are some of the curators of social media hashtags for academics I follow. #PhDChat (@NSRiazat) Nasima Riazat The first time […]
– September 28, 2013
As I have said in previous blog posts, we are having a fairly impressive hiring spree for tenure-track positions at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE) Región Centro campus. We are hiring in International Relations, Public Administration and now in Political Studies. You should be forewarned that both International Relations and Political Studies […]
– September 21, 2013
I’m a big fan of productivity tips and blogs, particularly those focused on academic/scholarly life. Although I have read dozens of blog posts by fellow professors, I don’t think I’ve ever read anything related to whether their desks are cluttered or not. For many people, their mental image of a professor is almost always someone […]
– September 14, 2013
CIDE (the Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas, A.C., Centre for Economics Research and Teaching) in Mexico recently (2011) opened a branch in central Mexico, the Region Centro campus (where I am based since July 2012). We are currently experiencing fast growth and we are hiring for a number of positions. This one (to start […]
– September 14, 2013
This term, I have returned to teaching after thoroughly enjoying my full year of teaching release. When I taught at The University of British Columbia’s Department of Political Science, I reached a point where my teaching load was 2-1-2 (5 courses per 12 months). That was, in my view, incredibly exhausting. I had very little […]
– September 12, 2013
A lot of people have asked me through the year how I accomplish as much as I do. While I feel enormously flattered, I don’t think I am particularly productive. What I am, is very disciplined. I learned early in my life that I had a really broad range of interests, and that if I […]
– August 26, 2013
We are hiring at CIDE Region Centro. Below is the actual ad IR Search 2013 – Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE) The Department of International Studies at CIDE (Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas/Center for Research and Teaching in Economics) seeks to fill one tenure-track position in International Relations, to start in August […]
– August 18, 2013
Academics work really hard, it’s a fact. Ever since I became an academic (e.g. ever since I started working in a research setting, which was two years before I even completed my undergraduate degree), my expectations of holidays were pretty much erased. I worked in a research lab where I was doing bench-scale wastewater treatment […]
– July 14, 2013
Academia is an industry of peers. We review each other’s work and (hopefully) we seek to raise the standard for writing, for research design, for methodological advances, and for theoretical development. I peer-review anywhere from 10 to 50 manuscripts per year, at least one book manuscript per year, and I sit on four editorial boards […]
– June 25, 2013
The reality is that I’ve always been a little bit of a workaholic, but I had felt that I had achieved some sense of balance at least in the last 3-5 years. I was exercising every single day, hanging out at least with one different (if not more) friend(s) every day, spending quality time JT […]
– May 27, 2013
A month or so ago, I began writing a document that mapped my writing output and my research trajectory. More than the research trajectory that other writers and myself have referred to at some points (i.e., the roadmap of what research output you need by when in order to achieve tenure, a-la-Karen Kelsky), the document […]
– May 17, 2013
Given that I’ve been focusing this year on being disciplined and writing EVERY SINGLE DAY (something I had to stop doing for 2 weeks while JT was here visiting me from Vancouver), and that I write first thing in the morning (4:45am, for the most part, although when I sleep in I start working at […]
– May 10, 2013
Whenever I think of my past and how it influenced my career choice of being a professor now, I always come back to my childhood. When I was 11, I read somewhere that the literacy rate in Mexico was in the 90%, but I never really believed it (obviously, these rates may vary geographically and […]
– May 7, 2013
In the past 3 weeks, I have submitted a total of 2 journal manuscripts (two in Spanish, one in English), 1 conference paper (in English), 1 book chapter (in Spanish) and one co-authored grant proposal (in English). In addition, I have about 8 manuscripts at various stages of development (for the most part, almost completed). […]
– April 13, 2013
One of the reasons my scholarly productivity went up (literally, through the roof) during a previous stage of my academic career was the fact that I had not one, but two amazing research assistants. Whatever I needed done (assemble datasets, create tables, format journal article manuscripts, organize my academic life), they were there. Right now, […]
– February 3, 2013
For the longest time, I have been fascinated with waste, although for some reason that is not 100% clear to me, I haven’t devoted much time to studying the scholarship around sustainable consumption. I’m currently engaged in a number of projects around the socio-political dynamics of informal recycling (waste picking) and as a result, I […]
– January 25, 2013
I am delighted to share with you the news that my department (and campus!) are hiring! Please forward this announcement to anyone you know who might fit the bill. Faculty Opening: Tenure-track Assistant Professor position. Department of Public Administration/CIDE‐Región Centro The Department of Public Administration at CIDE (Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas) solicits applicants […]
– January 14, 2013
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