Making new connections with researchers I’ve never met
I sent cold emails looking for help, here’s what they shared
In my last post, I wrote about a couple researchers I reached out to. I was asking them for recommendations for things to read and other researchers to know about.
I think it’s important to be transparent about your process as a researcher. It’s not a perfect, smooth, unattainable process. To be real, it’s a mix of feeling in the zone, that you’re really doing what you love, feeling detached from the work, inadequate, and like an impostor. Part of that process includes reaching out to people for help and attaching threads between you. That thread may be two email exchanges, others may result in a new mutual instagram follow, or an in-person meeting after talking online.
Here are the resources two people—Kajal Meghani and Dr. Nicole M. West kindly shared with me.
1 Archival Decolonist
by Nathan “Mudyi” Sentance
2 Feminist Killjoys
by Sara Ahmed: “My name is Sara Ahmed, and this is my research blog. I am a feminist killjoy. It is what I do. It is how I think. It is my philosophy and my politics. I was the inaugural director of the Centre for Feminist Research (CFR) at Goldsmiths. You can find further information about the CFR here. I am now working as an independent feminist scholar and writer.”
3 Black Feminism in Education
Black Women Speak Back, Up, and Out (Black Studies and Critical Thinking) New edition Edition. By Billye Sankofa Waters (Author), Bettina L. Love
4 Dafina-Lazarus Stewart
“Dr. Dafina-Lazarus (D-L) Stewart (proper gender pronouns of reference: he/him/his and they/them/their) is professor in the School of Education and co-chair of the Student Affairs in Higher Education programs at Colorado State University. D-L is a scholar, educator, and activist focused on empowering and imagining futures that sustain and cultivate the learning, growth, and success of minoritized groups in postsecondary education.”
