At what career stage should you publish what?

Manya Whitaker’s recent Chronicle column on publishing strategies generated some Twitter discussion (Here is an example, and here is another). Whitaker is critiqued for suggesting that early career researchers should focus on peer-reviewed journals from credible publishers, at the expense of more publicly engaged kinds of publishing. They should make sure that their material “appears…

Writing your tenure package

At this time of year, Assistant Professors turn their minds to their tenure applications. Last week, apparently in the throes of the process, Chris Wolff asked whether anyone had “any advice for someone reluctant to sign their own praises”. I gave some brief replies in that thread, but I wanted to expand a bit here.…

Equity, diversity, fieldwork, and the archaeological identity : Must archaeologists do fieldwork?

Josh Emmitt sparked an interesting conversation on Twitter about the requiredness of physically strenuous fieldwork in archaeology. Are there jobs in archaeology that are “non-fieldwork/non-super physical”, he asks? Some wonder whether people who do no fieldwork are even real archaeologists. The discussion, beyond giving a number of great example of archaeological roles that do not…

High school students taught me how to teach

It was almost 30 years ago, in the final few days of my undergrad. I was walking into the department office for some last minute paperwork. Vince was walking out. He said he was glad he bumped into me. Vince was a bit older than the rest of us. He was already married and had…

A snapshot of Finnish Anthropology in 1975, as seen from the outside

This week, I blogged about the Fifth International Directory of Anthropologists, published in 1975. Of course, I couldn’t resist looking at what Finnish content might be in there. The Directory lists 13 anthropologists in Finland in 1975, down from 18 in the first edition in 1938. Seven are listed in Helsinki and three in Turku,…