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Researching “what you really want to” versus “what you know you need to”

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 edits, and that I need to submit before the end of October). But in the past couple of weeks I have found myself really drawn to the topic of bottled water. Specifically, to the politics of bottled water consumption in Latin America and Mexico. So I’m more drawn to starting a new project than finishing what I already have on the pipeline.

Bottled water

It shouldn’t be a surprise that this area of research is of interest to me. After all, my PhD student is doing her dissertation on water privatization in Latin America, and bottled water is one of the angles from where this topic can be approached. But interestingly enough, during commutes to and from Morelia and in other side trips I have had to take (when I travel to Leon and back to Aguascalientes) I have found myself reading scholarship on bottled water consumption for fun. And writing about it. Almost as though I am obsessed with the topic.

This is one of the challenges with the way I do research. I always have multiple projects on the go and I have a very broad spectrum of research interests, but bottled water really has gotten under my skin. I have even taken a little bit of what Jamie Linton calls “a dialectic relationship with water” even buying a 6 pack of small bottles of water to assess (through my own experience) when do I feel the need/desire to consume bottled water. I usually carry my own water bottle, so I rarely have this need. But in the spirit of research, I wanted to experience the interaction with bottles of water.

I feel even more conflicted because World Toilet Day 2013 is approaching. I’m a scholar of sanitation and wastewater governance. If there is a day that justifies my field of research, it is November 19th, World Toilet Day. I should be reading up again on what the Joint Monitoring Programme is publishing regarding sanitation statistics, and examining the latest literature. But here I find myself obsessed with bottled water consumption.

Does this ever happen to you? If so, what do you do?

Posted in academia, research, wastewater, water governance.

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On the value of small workshops versus large conferences in academia

This has been an extremely productive year for me. In 2013 alone, I have participated, so far, in 2 international conferences (the biennial meeting of the International Association for the Study of the Commons, in Kitafuji, Japan, and the 2013 meeting of the Latin American Studies Association in Washington DC, USA), and 2 international workshops (“The Political Dimensions of Water Resources” in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas in Mexico, and “The Ways and Means of Transnational Private Regulation” in Dublin, Ireland). This tally is not even counting the local conferences I’ve presented at (IGLOM 2013, the biennial Meeting of Researchers on Local Governments in Mexico that took place in Guadalajara, the 2013 International Political Science conference in Guanajuato).

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What I have found is that I like small workshops much better than I do large scale conferences. Of course, I love attending LASA, ISA, APSA, AAG. These are conferences where I network with a vast community of scholars in different fields with whom I have established (or want to build the foundation for) collaborative networks. But small-scale workshops allow me to spend full days immersed in one topic, instead of shuttling from room to room chasing scholars I want to hear.

My experience at LASA 2013 in Washington DC this summer (presenting, not actually attending) was somewhat disappointing. I did receive some interesting feedback on my paper, but it was a huge room and there were like 15 attendees (there were 3 presenters in my panel). Frankly, for the expense, I really didn’t feel I got much out of what I invested (full disclosure: LASA gave me a travel grant, but I paid additional expenses).

TPRDublin13 Workshop

Contrast that to the workshops I participated in, where I could focus entirely for two or three days in the research we were discussing (in one case, the politics of water, and in the other, transnational private regulation). In both cases I felt that I actually was able to immerse myself in the topic. This feeling may also be the result of the type of conferences I attend. LASA is massive, and too heterogeneous and diverse. Although IASC wasn’t that big of a conference compared to LASA, it was a titch too diverse (I study water as a commons, whereas we discussed every type of commons, including forests, climate, etc).

I’ve had the same type of experience at International Studies Association, Canadian Association of Geographers, and a number of other conferences I’ve attended. I still plan to do several of those, but I’m going to privilege participating in smaller-scale workshops when I want to get more out of an academic meeting of the minds.

Posted in academia, research.

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Workshop on Environment and Development in Latin America at CIDE (CIDE-WEDELA)

Workshop on Environment and Development Economics in Latin America (WEDELA) at CIDE Santa FeIn recent years, CIDE (my home institution) has made an effort to increase the number of tenure-track hires in the environmental field. My colleague Alejandro Lopez-Feldman (who is the Director of the Economics Division and a solid scholar of environmental and development economics) was kind enough to invite me to the Workshop on Environment and Development in Latin America that was recently held at CIDE Santa Fe in Mexico City.

Several of my colleagues, Juan Manuel Torres Rojo (who is a forest economist and the former head of CONAFOR), Hector Nuñez who works alongside me in the Region Centro campus of CIDE, and David Heres who is at CIDE Santa Fe, as well as our recent hire Lopamudra Chakraborti who is also at the Region Centro campus are all environmental economists and it’s exciting to see the emerging environment cluster emerge at CIDE.

Workshop on Environment and Development in Latin America (CIDE Santa Fe Mexico City)

I’m not an environmental economist per se, but as a specialist in environmental policy, it is important for my own research that I am conversant in the scholarship that is being produced in the environmental economics field. Furthermore, my quantitative training allows me to have reasonable coherent conversations with my colleagues about the work they are undertaking. While the entire program was really good, I was there with most interest to hear one of the keynotes, Dr. Madhu Khanna, of Khanna and Damon fame.

Workshop on Environment and Development in Latin America (CIDE Santa Fe Mexico City)

Madhu and I met at a North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation workshop on information-disclosure policy instruments many, many years ago, while I was still a PhD student. Her paper with Damon (1999) was one of the many papers I had to read for my comprehensive examinations, and I fell in love with the way she conducted evaluations of voluntary environmental policy instruments, such as the US 33/50 and the Toxics Release Inventory. I have studied information-disclosure policy instruments in Mexico (the RETC, Registro de Emisiones y Transferencia de Contaminantes). Madhu wrote a really nice paper that provides an overview of non-regulatory approaches to pollution control that you can read here.

I was also very interested in hearing the panel on climate variability and impacts on Mexico. I was fascinated with Edward Taylor (University of California, Davis) on Climate Change and Labor Allocation in Mexico: Evidence from Annual Fluctuations in Weather, and with Marcelo Olivera (Universidad Autónoma de México, Cuajimalpa) who presented on Climate Change, Rain Fed Maize Productivity and Rural Malnutrition in Mexico. Unfortunately I couldn’t Storify this workshop in time and thus I can’t post the actual tweets that I sent throughout the first day of the workshop, but you can read them here.

Workshop on Environment and Development Economics in Latin America (WEDELA) at CIDE Santa Fe

I think the workshop was quite successful, and with the impending opening of our Masters programs in Regional and Environmental Economics (coordinated by my friend and colleague David Juarez), we will definitely be seeing more environmentally-focused events at both campuses of CIDE. Stay tuned.

Posted in academia, policy instruments.

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Strategies for academic success: Have the resources necessary for your work

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 admit why I’m doing so well, and why this 2012-2013 academic cycle has been so productive for me: I have the resources that I need to succeed.

My office at CIDE Region Centro during and after writing a paper

The statement I wrote applies both to my institutional environment and my home. If you notice in these photos of my office at CIDE Region Centro, you will see that I have a laptop, a desktop, a tablet computer and an all-in-one laser printer (with scanner and photocopier integrated). Having all these pieces of hardware does enable me substantially. I don’t need to leave my office to print anything as I can print at my own office. We do have shared printers, and I’m grateful for those, but I am also very relieved that I now have my very own printer (this was my belated birthday gift to myself).

My office at CIDE Region Centro during and after writing a paper

I have access to an excellent library, both personal and on campus (full disclosure: I am the library representative of CIDE Region Centro to the main library at CIDE Santa Fe, thus I have a personal stake and interest in having the best book and journal collection in all of Mexico). I have access to online journals. My offices, both at CIDE Region Centro and at my home are both equipped with everything I possibly may need (including photos and framed pictures of my nieces and nephews for motivation).

Thus, it is hardly news that I’m successful. I am given the mental, physical and intellectual space to thrive, and in turn I make the best use of these resources.

Posted in academia.


Workshop “The Ways and Means of Transnational Private Regulation” (Dublin, Oct 11 and 12, 2013)

Earlier this year, I was invited to participate in the international workshop “The Ways and Means of Transnational Private Regulation“, to be held in Dublin on October 11th and 12 th, 2013. I really prefer workshops to the larger version of academic conferences, as they tend to be more intimate and more conducive to feedback and discussions.

The Ways and Means of Transnational Private Regulation Workshop (Dublin Oct 11 and 12, 2013)

Fabrizio Caffagi (EUI/Trento), the leader of the Hiil Transnational Private Regulation Project

I have been studying transnational advocacy networks for a long while now, and I wanted to explore whether the two empirical case studies of North American environmental policy that I have studied the most (the Citizen Submission on Enforcement Matters mechanism and the North American Pollutant Release and Transfer Registry Project, both of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation of North America) would withstand the scrutiny of a new theoretical framework, transnational private regulation. My paper is titled “Transnational Private Environmental Regulation in North America: Just
How Much Power do Private Actors Have?

TPRDublin13 Workshop

I was in Dublin last week (I just arrived today, via Madrid and Mexico City) and I’m still a bit jet-lagged (I touched five countries in this trip – England, the US, Spain, Ireland and of course Mexico). The feedback I received on my paper was excellent and I want to take this opportunity to thank all the participants. One of the participants I was looking forward to meet the most was David Vogel from Berkeley, whose work I’ve followed for a long while, since I was a PhD student!

TPRDublin13 Workshop

Also, since Colin Scott also tweets, finally someone live-tweeted one of my papers! (I’m usually the one doing the live-tweeting). You can read some of the discussion by following the Storify of the hashtag #TPRDublin13.

Thanks to UCD Law, the organizers, and Nova UCD for being the most gracious hosts. And to the participants for a fantastic workshop.

Posted in academia, public policy theories, research.

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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.

nasima riaziat#PhDChat (@NSRiazat) Nasima Riazat
The first time I saw a scholarly discussion of issues related to PhD life (and life as a graduate student) was over at #PhDChat. During the first few months, I joined the weekly hashtag moderation that was led by (soon-to-be Dr.) Nasima Riazat. Currently, #PhDChat functions both synchronously (weekly on Wednesdays I think) but also asynchronously. Any time someone wants to provide a piece of advice to PhD students (or just discuss PhD life), they do so over on the #PhDChat hashtag. Thanks to Nasima for always curating the feed, often retweeting very useful advice.

Nadine Muller#PhDAdvice (@Nadine_Muller) Nadine Muller
The second time I saw someone actually make a concerted effort to provide PhD students with advice was Dr. Nadine Muller, who is a Lecturer in English Literature at Liverpool John Moores University. She actually created a website, The New Academic, to help not only PhD students, but also early career scholars. While #PhDAdvice has taken off as well as an asynchronous hashtag and not a weekly, curated discussion, I have found enormous value in the hashtag and I would strongly recommend following it.

raul_on_patio_having_brunch_with_Lynne#ScholarSunday (@RaulPacheco) Raul Pacheco-Vega
Ok, so this is a bit self-serving if you want, but I do curate a social media hashtag, Scholar Sunday (I used to curate #MyResearch as well, but it got a bit overwhelming and contaminated with spam). Scholar Sunday was born because was bored to tears with ridiculously long lists of Twitter IDs with the #FollowFriday hashtag attached (or #FF). Frankly, my idea was to help build scholarly communities, so I decided to create #ScholarSunday to encourage people who follow scholars/academics/intellectuals to share who they follow, but more importantly, WHY they do. I’ll fully confess to being adamant on the use so as to avoid it becoming yet another #FF (Follow Friday). While I curate the hashtag, I’m thrilled that even without me prompting them, a lot of people already jump on the bandwagon. If you want to follow some smart people, try looking through the #ScholarSunday hashtag.

ProfRagsdale#SaturdaySchool (@ProfRagsdale) Rhonda Ragsdale
This is a much more curated hashtag as it’s a weekly undertaking by (soon-to-be-Dr.) Rhonda Ragsdale, who is an Associate Professor of History at Lone Star College – North Harris, and a PhD Candidate at Rice University. Rhonda curates a weekly teach-in (as she calls it, a protest against misinformation). These occur on Saturdays, every week, with a different topic/theme. I’ve guest co-hosted previous #SaturdaySchool teach-ins on water, and I’d do it again, because it’s a great exercise in learning about a topic you may have never talked about.

jeffrey2011ireland420#AdjunctChat (@JeffreyKeefer) Jeffrey Keefer
Dr. Jeffrey Keefer, who works as a Learning and Development Project Manager (Clinical Education) and Adjunct Professor at New York University and Pace University in New York City has taken on the challenging task of providing a forum for those professors who are not on a tenure-track stream (or tenured). Given the current dismal conditions of non-tenure-track faculty, serious conversations around this topic are much needed and I’m grateful to Jeffrey for curating the hashtag and hosting the weekly chat. #AdjunctChat provides a great forum to discuss issues that should be relevant to everybody in higher education.

KLWheat ECRChat#ECRChat (@KL_Wheat and @SnarkyPhD) Katie Wheat and Hazel Ferguson
While there was a couple of hashtags for PhD students (#PhDAdvice and #PhDChat, with #PhDForum a third that comes to mind right now), there wasn’t an actual chat for those of us who already got the PhD but aren’t senior scholars. Enter Hazel Ferguson and Katie Wheat, who co-host and co-organize the weekly chat for Early Career Scholars, #ECRChat. SnarkyPhD Hazel FergusonI know how hard it is to host a weekly Twitter chat, so I’m glad they do this on a fortnight (e.g. one week yes, one week no). If I had to host every week I’d be completely wiped (I tried to guest host a couple of times, but I couldn’t because I was overwhelmed with work). Of course, #ECRChat is also asynchronous and anybody who has (or wants) some advice will do it.

Jeremy Segrott#AcWri (@DrATarrant and @DrJeremySegrott) Anna Tarrant and Jeremy Segrott
Given how often I use the hashtag, you would probably be right that if I might have forgotten #AcWri it would have been a sin. But no, I didn’t. annatarrant The intellectual child of Dr. Anna Tarrant and Dr. Jeremy Segrott, #AcWri has become a virtual online forum where we academics (of all extractions, be it PhD students, Masters, or early career scholars, or senior professors) can discuss issues associated with academic writing. I love #AcWri, and while it is also a synchronous weekly chat, I often use it asynchronously.

Two edits: #GetYourManuscriptOut and #SUWT (Shut Up and Write Tuesdays)

#GetYourManuscriptOut is a hashtag that Mireya Marquez (UIA), Steven Shaw (McGill University) and I started to ensure collective encouragement to finish up manuscripts that were languishing. The hashtag has taken up quite nicely and there’s a lot of people tweeting support for academic writing in order to finish manuscripts. You can follow the hashtag here.

Shut Up and Write Tuesdays (SUWT): In their own words,

Our goal is to help you set aside dedicated writing time, make progress, learn from others, and become part of an international community of academic writers. So if you’ve got a thesis chapter, journal article, grant application, or conference abstract to write, you’ve come to the right place!

You can imagine, of course, that Shut Up and Write Tuesdays happens in fact on Tuesdays. You can follow their tweetage here. Dr Siobhan O’Dwyer is the founder of Shut Up & Write Tuesdays and the host of @SUWTues, Dr Rebecca Jefferson is the host of @SUWTUK and Jennifer Goff is the host of @SUWTNA, with guest hosts Dr Sharon McDonough and Michelle Redman-MacLaren.

Of course, you could argue that I missed #SocPhD, #PhDForum, etc. But this list was already long as I was writing it, so I’m sure someone else will take on the idea and run with it. I just thought I should summarize them for your perusal.

Posted in academia.

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Doing fieldwork in the Cañón del Sumidero and the Chicoasén Dam (Chiapas)

A few weeks ago I participated in a cross-national, multi-institution workshop on the political aspects of water resources. This workshop is one of two organized by Dr. Edith Kauffer from the Center for Studies in Applied Anthropology (CIESAS) Unidad Sureste. The Sureste branch of CIESAS is focused on studying and analyzing social issues in the southernmost part of Mexico.

Taller Tematico SRE-CONACYT Dimensiones Politicas de Recursos Hidricos

The field trip was organized in two components: First, we travelled by boat throughout the Sumidero Canyon, which was both amazing and disheartening. Amazing in that it enabled us to be witnesses to some of the most beautiful natural surroundings we have in Mexico.

Sumidero Canyon-60

Photo credit: Graeme Churchard on Flickr

The Sumidero Canyon is a wonderful natural beauty, but we also saw some of the worst plastic-bottle pollution I’ve witnessed in my life. As a scholar of sanitation, I’m used to wastewater, but what I saw at the Sumidero Canyon was just heartbreaking.

Fieldwork in the Grijalva River

The degree of pollution in the Grijalva River is heartbreaking. Photo credit: Dr. Francisco Peña

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The group of Mexican and foreign scholars who participated in the field trip. Photo credit: Dr. Francisco Peña

Fieldwork in the Grijalva River

You can see me to the right, on the boat with my Mexican and foreign colleagues who participated in the field trip. Photo credit: Dr. Francisco Peña

The second component of our trip was a visit to the Chicoasén Dam and Hydroelectric Power Station. I felt privileged to be allowed to visit, as I’m sure there are serious national security concerns. But since we were a group of international academics genuinely interested in understanding how the Chicoasén Dam and the hydroelectric plant worked, that made our access easier. That, and the fantastic work of Dr. Kauffer in negotiating a visit.

The Chicoasén Dam is one of four dams in the Grijalva River (alongside Angostura, Peñitas and Malpaso).

DSCN0773

The Manuel Moreno Torres hydroelectric power plant was fascinating to visit. First, as a chemical engineer, it was great to be inside an industrial plant again. Second, as a scholar of water governance interested in the water-energy nexus, it made me think about the deep interconnections between these two natural resources (water and energy). When I was still a PhD student, in 2001, I remember that one of my favorite professors (Dr. Les Lavkulich, now an emeritus professor at UBC) said that water and energy would be the twin environmental issues of the century. He was definitely right.

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The group of Mexican and foreign scholars who participated in the field trip. Photo credit: Dr. Francisco Peña

Over the course of this field-trip I learned a few things, which may be obvious to other scholars, but I hadn’t thought about them previously. First, it is actually a great idea to have a multidisciplinary team of scholars do fieldwork (or at least, field trips/field visits) to specific sites that are associated with the main theme of the scientific workshop. I learned a lot from my fellow academics who study the social sciences of water. Second, that there is no better way to grasp the empirical realities than actually being on the field. Seeing as I am someone who privileges fieldwork over pure data and number-crunching, I felt validated that my peers also enjoyed the field experience.

In fact, now I understand why numerous academic conferences offer field trips (particularly in the human geography field). They are in fact enriching experiences, and I learned enough during this preliminary visit to decide to come back and do more in-depth fieldwork. This area (Chiapas) offers a plethora of opportunities for water-related social research, and I do hope I will be able to visit again and do interviews with residents.

Posted in academia, bridging academia and practice.

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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 close fairly soon (September 30th, and October 30th, 2013). Below is the ad for the Political Studies position, which you can also read here in PDF format. As always, I am happy to answer questions about life in Aguascalientes, CIDE in general and CIDE Región Centro in particular, but I am not on the Search Committee for this position so I cannot answer specifics about what the Division of Political Studies is looking for. There is contact information for you to ask, though, should you be interested.

The Department of Political Science at the Center for Economics Research and Teaching
(CIDE) invites applications for a tenure-track position at its campus in Aguascalientes, Mexico. The position is open to any topic and any subfield within comparative politics, but special consideration will be given to candidates specializing in at least one of the following areas: federalism, fiscal policy, regional parties or local politics. A strong training in quantitative or qualitative methodology along with a focus on Latin America will be especially attractive.

CIDE is a research-oriented university in the social sciences teaching undergraduate and graduate programs to select students in small groups. The university was recently ranked as having the top political science department in Latin America, measured by publication impact. Faculty members are expected to publish in top national and international journals and editorials. Our new campus in Aguascalientes was inaugurated in 2011 to recruit elite students from all regions of the country, and to form a group of strong scholars contributing to the study of accountability, public finances and subnational governments. Aguascalientes is a safe, beautiful and culturally rich city with a thriving economy that often appears in top ranks of quality of life among Mexican cities. The position offers a competitive salary with a lower-than average teaching load.

For details about this job posting feel free to contact Prof. Aldo Ponce or Prof. Gilles Serra. For information about our Aguascalientes campus visit the undergraduate programme’s webpage.

Candidates should provide:

(1) a short cover letter;
(2) a detailed curriculum vitae;
(3) a writing sample; and
(4) at least three letters of reference.

Applications should be sent to Prof. Gilles Serra, Search Committee Chair, at contrataciones.politicos@cide.edu. Review of applications will begin October 29, 2013. Later applications will be accepted while position is not filled but are not guaranteed full consideration. Employment would begin in August 2014. The successful candidate is required to have a PhD in hand before August 2014 when employment begins

Posted in academia.

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Laura Atuesta on incarceration probabilities and drug use – Seminar at CIDE Region Centro

Seminar Laura Atuesta CIDEMy colleague Dr. Laura Atuesta (who is a Visiting Assistant Professor at CIDE Region Centro’s Drug Policy Programme) did a really interesting econometric analysis of two datasets (the Encuesta Nacional de Adicciones, ENA and the Encuesta a Internos en Reclusorios Federales) trying to discern if there is any correlation between probability of being incarcerated and drug use.

Seminario Laura Atuesta

Given how Mexican drug policy and Mexican security policy seem to be focused on health-related crimes instead of actual, real impact crimes, this kind of work is important. I sent out a few tweets during her talk. I am sure I didn’t capture the richness of her paper, but I really enjoyed it. My colleague Dr. Catalina Perez-Correa, who conducted the survey to populations internet in Mexican jails, was the discussant.

I am not sure whether the paper can be shared yet but interested parties could contact Laura to discuss the paper. I really enjoyed Laura’s delivery. She has done a lot of work on program evaluation and policy impact, so it was nice to see an econometrician actually delivering a seminar that does not cut and paste the STATA tables and actually provides policy implications that are readable for a broader audience.

Posted in academia, bridging academia and practice.

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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 whose desk is filled with papers, journal articles, and books. Having cluttered desk almost would appear to be synonymous with being an academic.

Home office at my Mom's

I’ll be the first to admit that whenever I am in “under pressure” writing mode, my desk is almost always cluttered. I spread journal articles, books, book chapters, research notes all over my desk, anywhere I am (be it my campus office, my home office or my parents’ home office). That said, periodically (at least once a month), I clear out my desk, both on the CIDE Region Centro campus (pictured below) and my home office.

Dr. Raul Pacheco-Vega's office at CIDE Region Centro

The jury is still out on whether a messy/cluttered desk is conducive or not to solid scholarly research. Some folks argue that a cluttered desk is bad for your productivity, whereas recent studies argue that messy/disorganized environments are conducive to creativity.

home office desk RPV

In my case the cluttered desk never works. I am organized and methodical about my research to a fault. I schedule my life to the 30 minute slot. I follow procedures and rules (I am, after all, a neoinstitutionalist theorist!). To me, cluttered desks are non-conducive to undertaking solid research. But then again, I am just an N=1 case. I am sure some of my fellow scholars, PhD students and professor colleagues can work in messier environments. I just can’t.

Posted in academia, writing.

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