Understanding and solving intractable resource governance problems.
Reviewing my students’ theses, and talking with them about their writing processes, they always tell me that they find crafting and constructing paragraphs very challenging. This is not unusual. Sentences and paragraphs form the core of our writing and each of them is, for many of us, beautiful and unique. Therefore, it is important that […]
– August 12, 2020
I already had written a blog post on writing a book review, but I have published a few that I am quite proud of, thus I thought I’d expand that blog post with a sequential, step-by-step description of my process. I need to finish 2 syllabi, so OBVIOUSLY I am going to write a Twitter […]
– August 8, 2020
Because I’ve been thinking about research all the time over the past few years (the mechanics and strategies of doing research, different methods to frame, design and answer a research question, how to effectively design a research project, etc.) I’ve also been wondering how can I craft a single, unified framework that can help writers […]
– August 7, 2020
Doctoral supervisors (and often, editors!) will ask you to create a conceptual, theoretical and/or analytical framework for your book, dissertation, chapter, or journal article. This is a good idea. I used to get confused by all the “framework”-associated terms, so I wrote THIS blog post: Writing theoretical frameworks, analytical frameworks and conceptual frameworks https://t.co/DeAqoV5xcQ This […]
– August 6, 2020
This is not my first blog post on research statements (this one on research statements and research trajectories and this other on research pipelines, research trajectories and research programmes are quite related), but this is perhaps the first time I write about and address the Research Statement as a key component of job applications for […]
– July 31, 2020
A professor from the Global South emailed me to ask if I would consider writing a blog post on best practices to maintain an organized set of folders for students. To be perfectly honest with you, I was never taught how to do this. These practices, whether best or not, are the ones I have […]
– July 5, 2020
This 2020 is weird in many ways. Several of my students are finishing up their degrees within the context of a global pandemic (COVID-19). But because the world was set up for degree and thesis completion before we knew our world would be changed forever, my students’ degrees have continuex and time passes inexorably. Therefore, […]
– May 26, 2020
Recientemente I wrote a Twitter thread on the value of annotated bibliographies, which I wanted to turn into a blog post because I wanted to really strengthen my argument. As most of you who read my blog post know, I HAVE written about annotated bibliographies, literature reviews, systematic reviews, etc. In my view, an annotated […]
– April 17, 2020
A few days ago, I saw a post in a discussion forum on how to write a Research Trajectory document. The conversation that ensued prompted me to consider how *I* viewed the different documents that we produce not only for job-seeking purposes (the Research Programme) but also for advancement reasons (the Research Trajectory), and for […]
– April 17, 2020
Because of the COVID-19 lockdown, I have been working from home now basically every day. Since I’m staying at my Mom’s for the duration of the shelter-in-place period, and I have a full-fledged home office complete with bookshelves, desks and a desktop computer, printer, and wireless internet, I have been able to focus a bit […]
– April 6, 2020
The more theses I supervise, the more essays I read and the more papers I have to peer-review for publication, the more I realize how important it is to teach how to craft good research questions. Many students of mine come with a general idea of what they want to study for their thesis, but […]
– March 4, 2020
The choices we make on whom to include and whom to exclude as we choose the readings for a syllabus are important and can be a political act as well. One of empowerment or one of exclusion. I strongly believe that we have a responsibility when designing syllabi. Developing a syllabus for a course/class requires […]
– February 23, 2020
Writing about academic writing, planning and scheduling, organizing and time management has led me to ponder the best ways in which information can be organized and retrieved. I am, after all, someone who wanted to be a librarian since he was a child, someone who organized his parents’ personal library using the Dewey system and […]
– February 2, 2020
I suspect everyone on this planet has had similar ideas to others, and come to the exact conclusion and concept independently. This is the case of similar approaches to my Everything Notebook concept. Someone asked if what I did was a “Commonplace Book”. When they asked, I had no idea what a commonplace book was, […]
– February 1, 2020
Two scholars I really respect and whose writing I follow quite meticulously are Dr. Pat Thomson (University of Nottingham) and Dr. William Germano (The Cooper Union). Both of them have independently developed and/or promoted ideas on how to make your full argument coherent, cogent and readable. When I first started editing my doctoral dissertation to […]
– January 26, 2020
As I mentioned earlier on my blog., two of my PhD students are THIS CLOSE to finishing their draft and defending. This week, I sat with one of them to go over her entire doctoral dissertation. I just wrote a Twitter thread on how my (close-to-defending) doctoral students are writing their Global Dissertation Narrative (GDN), […]
– January 17, 2020
Because of the similarity of both concepts (one notebook to organize your life), a lot of people online confuse my idea of the Everything Notebook with the Bullet Journal. I’ve tweeted about the differences between both systems quite a few times, but on this occasion I want to keep these tweets in more permanent form. […]
– January 14, 2020
I’m often asked to discuss one of my most popular techniques, the Everything Notebook. I have considered making YouTube videos explaining how to make one, how it operates, etc. But I end up running out of time. But over the winter break (this past one, December 2019-January 2020), I was asked what kind of stuff […]
– January 14, 2020
I have long admired Professor Bent Flyvbjerg for being an economic geographer who speaks methodologically and conceptually to many other disciplines. As someone who has been trained both in political science and human geography (with a concentration in economic geography), and who works in public administration/public management/public policy as well as comparative politics and international […]
– January 13, 2020
Even though English is my first language (contrary to what many people may think because of my name and last names) and I was trained in English-language institutions (The University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and University of Manchester, in Manchester, England), I have published A TON of Spanish-language journal articles and book chapters. […]
– December 28, 2019
I won’t tell anyone what to do, but as I close out a terrible year, health-wise, I want to share a reflection regarding MY OWN EXPERIENCE with overwork. I think everyone can do whatever they prefer, I’m just using my experience to reflect on the profound inequalities and inequities of the higher education system and […]
– December 28, 2019
I have had a very diverse life and with that, I have developed various networks of friends who do NOT work at all in academia. These friends and colleagues have enriched my life enormously. John, Rebecca, Ryan, Tanya and myself when I was in graduate school. All of them worked in the tech industry, while […]
– December 27, 2019
One of the things I find most challenging to teach is the skill necessary to map out scholarly debates. I find that most professors offer a list of articles, book chapters and books that (in theory) map the field as they see it. However, I find that very few if any provide any guidance on […]
– December 10, 2019
One of my biggest problems, as I have openly said everywhere, is that I often prioritize other people over myself. This is partly because I’m overly generous by nature, partly because I also know that helping others will come to me naturally, whereas sometimes tackling my own work is hard and difficult. One of the […]
– December 1, 2019
One of the biggest challenges I find when reviewing the work of my graduate students is that their work is often not situated within the broader landscape of scholarly literature. They have made an important contribution, but it does not show clearly in their writing. I tell them “you need to put your research into […]
– November 30, 2019
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