Skip to content


Search Results for: writing

A summary of curators and social media hashtags for academics

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 […]

Assistant Professor position (Political Studies) at CIDE Region Centro

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 […]

Are all professors’ desks cluttered?

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 […]

Tenure-track assistant professor position opening at CIDE Region Centro in Public Administration or Public Policy

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 […]

Balancing teaching and research

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 […]

Scheduling my academic life to the very minute: My weekly template

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 […]

Tenure-track International Relations position at #CIDERegionCentro

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 […]

Is working over the holidays a norm in academic life?

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 […]

The ethics of academic peer-review: Some tips and best practices

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 […]

Working on weekends as a norm in academic life

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 […]

On the evolution of my thinking and research trajectory

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 […]

On working from home as an academic: Having the best possible setup for a home office

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 […]

National Teacher Appreciation Day 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 […]

My Top 10 academic productivity tips, or how I submitted 5 pieces in 3 weeks

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). […]

Working with research assistants: My approach and philosophy

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, […]

Discard Studies and the social science of garbage: Some preliminary reflections

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 […]

Tenure-track faculty opening at #CIDERegionCentro (Public Administration)

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 […]

Youth unemployment, teaching hire-able skills and the duty of a professor

During my tenure at The University of British Columbia’s Department of Political Science I taught some of the most applied courses in the undergraduate curriculum. This was partly luck, because the department needed me to teach those types of course, and partly my own design. Even if the courses were theoretical (like Global Environmental Politics, […]

Quick reflections on what I have learned this semester

This term has been incredibly instructive. Since moving from UBC Vancouver to CIDE Region Centro in Aguascalientes I have had the opportunity to start developing a number of research questions I had wanted to examine for a long time. I will fully admit that I am enjoying a full year of teaching release (2012-2013), a […]

#IGiveAShit, The global politics of sanitation and #WorldToiletDay 2012 #WTD2012

Telling anyone (even some of your academic peers) that you specialize in doing scholarly work on the global politics of sanitation and the governance of wastewater is sometimes the surest way to make people chuckle and laugh. When I first shared the news about World Toilet Day (organized by the World Toilet Organization and endorsed […]

Celebrating World Teachers Day 2012: On why I teach

Sadly, there is no World Professors Day, but there is World Teachers Day, so I figured I would dust off a couple of blog posts that were published on my personal site, but are definitely worth revisiting. The first one mentions the reasons behind my love of teaching. I began teaching at UBC in 2006, […]

Joining CIDE Region Centro in Aguascalientes, Mexico as an Assistant Professor

I’m proud to announce that as of July 1st, 2012 I have joined the Public Administration Division of CIDE (Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas, AC – Center for Economic Teaching and Research) as a tenure-track Assistant Professor. My geographical base will be the new campus of CIDE, CIDE Region Centro in Aguascalientes, the capital […]

Students at UBC: Call for papers UBC Journal of Political Studies & UBC Journal of International Affairs

This year, students of mine are the Editors in Chief of both the UBC Journal of Political Studies AND the UBC Journal of International Affairs. In view of this, I’m hereby writing to promote both calls for papers. Note that deadlines are fast approaching. UBC Journal of Political Studies The UBC Journal of Political Studies […]

Real-life policy discussions on Canadian and British Columbia post-secondary education with Minister @NaomiYamamoto #POLI350A #bcpse #cdnpse #bcpoli

There are a number of reasons why I teach Public Policy (350A the Canadian version and 352A the comparative, cross-national version when I am asked to teach it). First, because I believe my students deserve to learn practical skills for when they go out on the workforce. My course Public Policy (POLI350A) is designed to […]

Suggestions for undergraduate students seeking professors’ letters of reference

photo credit: photosteve101 One of the reasons why I ask my students in my syllabus to provide me with a photograph and a brief summary of their background and why they are taking my courses is because I am a firm believer in mentorship. I work hard at encouraging my students to grow, and if […]