Good luck with the start of another academic year: you are not alone. Mental health is often falsely presented as irrelevant to people of colour. Dr. Samara Linton and Dr. Rianna Walcott's brilliant The Colour of Madness explores mental health for and by people of colour across art, essays, poetry, and stories. Together with PhDiva Xine they discus…

Adversity and the power of friendship! In the second half of the interview, PhDiva Xine talks with historian Cassie Osei about pedagogy during the pandemic and life lessons from Sailor Moon. Do you watch anime? How does it affect how you engage in the world?For show notes see our blogpost: https://phdivaspodcast.wordpress.com/2022/07/11/s6e9-pandem…

Wherever they are, Black women have always theorized about race and gender, says Dr. Cassie Osei. In the first of two eps, PhDiva Xine interviews Cassie Osei, historian of Afro-Brazilian women's history, longtime PhDivas Podcast listener, and newly minted PhDiva (!). Cassie talks about archival methodologies, Black feminist theorizing beyond the US…

Let's talk about feelings, unfeelings, boundaries, and emotional labour! How do we build solidarities beyond what Black feminist Audre Lorde calls 'the master's house'? In part 2, PhDiva Liz chats to Xine about her book Disaffected and how her own positionality as a Chinese diasporic queer person led to how she navigates a feminist approach to feel…

So much and yet so little has changed for women of colour since the 19th century... PhDivas Liz and Xine discuss Xine's first book DISAFFECTED. Xine shares the challenges of writing a monograph (a fancy academic term for research book). Chapter 4 is kind of an homage to Liz: it discusses Black feminist approaches to STEM in the nineteenth century b…

If the master's tools can never dismantle the master's house, what can we build instead? Since emotional labour is racialized and gendered, what if minoritized people say 'no'? Listen to several brilliant WOC scholars discuss PhDiva Xine's new book DISAFFECTED: each of them was given a chapter of the book to respond to in order to give the audience…

Have you watched Netflix's The Chair? Join PhDivas Liz and Xine as they talk about all the uncomfortable resonances between their experiences as women of colour in academia and the short 'comedy' series starring Sandra Oh. (Yes, Xine even had a student describe her as 'if Sandra Oh were an academic.') They discuss antiblackness, model minority fail…

Just because they are both systems of oppression does not mean that casteism ≠ racism! Postcolonialism developed as a field of study established by predominantly Indian intellectuals -- but only understanding them as non-Black people of colour erases their caste privilege. Shaista Patel, a professor in Critical Muslim studies at UC San Diego, chats…

Mother's Day Special! Liz interviews her mom about what it's like to raise a PhDiva. Learn about Liz's childhood career aspirations and their intergenerational experience of education in Mississippi.Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/phdivaspodcastDe către PhDivas

Springtime is the season of success for a few... and rejection for the majority. PhDivas Liz and Xine revisit the perennial topic of the many, many forms of rejection in academia -- from grants, students, programmes -- as early career scholars and attentive to disparities of power. Failure isn't only personal, but can be structural especially for B…

2021 has been a rough start for the PhDivas. Liz and Xine recorded this in the week after the white supremacist insurrection at the US Capitol -- and then somehow we had to go about academic 'business as usual.' So here the PhDivas discuss the conflicts between our exhaustion, our new curious status as inspirations, the start of term, the resumptio…

PhDivas Dr. Xine Yao and Dr. Liz Wayne get together over American Thanksgiving to talk about the challenges of working during COVID19. Supporting our own self care as we support our students, or research efforts is no trivial feat. All the best as the term and the year are winding down!Learn about the Indigenous peoples and their treaties of the la…

"This belongs in a museum!" Indiana Jones's catchphrase inspired generations of young archaeologists like Alex Fitzpatrick who are now critical of their discipline's colonial and imperialist pasts and presents. In this second part of their interview, PhDiva Xine chats with Alex about Napoleon's influence and approaching archaeology through animals,…

Handing in your PhD dissertation and disrupting the field of archaeology is exhausting enough... but during a global pandemic? Archaeologist Alex Fitzpatrick talks to PhDiva Xine on the cusp of earning her degree about precarity, post-dissertation depression, and the strangeness of a Chinese diasporic migrant in the United Kingdom. Twitter @Archaeo…

Imagine an interdisciplinary volume collecting advice and experiences of women of colour in graduate school. PhDiva Xine discusses Degrees of Difference with co-editors Denise Delgado and Kimberly McKee (Grand Valley State University). The project grew out of their friendships during their PhDs at Ohio State: other related collaborations include a …

COVID-19 presents new challenges and possibilities for disabled students. Thousands signed an open letter asking grant agencies to automatically extend student funding and for grants for assistive equipment needed to work remotely. Conversely, many shifts to coronavirus teaching are only too familiar to disabled people who have long been advocating…

"To boldly go to where no man has gone before" -- the classic Star Trek slogan reflects how colonialism informs space exploration. NASA's technologies are the same used for American imperialist ventures today. Even space rocks in museums are procured because of British colonialism. Planetary scientist Divya Persaud and STS scholar Ellie Armstrong o…

Some of us have additional care responsibilities at home. Some of us are all alone at home. How do we care for ourselves and each other during lockdown? In this second part of our interview, Professor Charissa Cheah draws upon her expertise in psychology to talk about managing child care and the paradoxes of digitally connected loneliness. The PhDi…

Why do we talk about our immune systems using the language of warfare? Let's discuss immunity from two perspectives that may seem very different: biomedical engineering and biopolitics. In this episode PhDivas Liz and Xine educate each other about their disciplinary knowledge of what "immunity" means. Cells at Work! is a recent anime about what goe…

Who is seen as the disease or the diseased? Psychologist Charissa Cheah received RAPID grant funding from the National Science Foundation to study the forms of anti-Chinese racism from COVID-19 and their impact on Chinese-American individuals, families, and communities. PhDivas Liz and Xine discuss with Professor Cheah the politics and histories ar…

Even scientists face deportation in an anti-immigration environment. But Dr. Furaha Asani cautions that academics shouldn't think of themselves as "one of the good ones." Biochemist Dr. Asani is now one of the migrant precariat because her visa was denied for questionable reasons. PhDiva Xine Yao interviews Dr. Asani about reimagining STEM PhD trai…

Do you have questions about #COVID19? Or even basic questions about viruses in general? Dr. Kishana Taylor is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of California, Davis. She studies the rate of reassortment between influenza viruses during co-infection. Listen as Dr. Taylor breaks down how viruses are named, with #COVID19 is so bad and what …

PhDivas Podcast interviews Computational Biologist Dr. Laura Boykin. We talk about Tree Lab, the project bringing sequencing capabilities to farmers in Uganda. Also mentioned, being nervous before a TED Talk, doing science on her own terms, and dancing. You can follow Dr. Boykin on twitter @Laura_boykin and learn about Tree Lab at cassavavirusactio…

There are currently fewer than 30 Black women full professors in the UK... in any discipline. If you know Angela Davis and Kimberle Crenshaw, do you also know about Gail Lewis and Olive Morris? PhDiva Xine interviews Jade Bentil, a historian of Black British women's activism, and Paulette Williams, who heads initiatives to support current and aspir…

How do we evaluate the value of our work? PhDivas is finally launching a Patreon in order to sustain this project. Liz and Xine decided to sit down and record why it has taken them so long to put this together. (Awkwardness!) Sometimes we are so used to giving free labour to our institutions and our field of study that, combined with imposter syndr…

Job security, unequal pay, excessive workloads, gender and racial inequality: this is the state of academia everywhere. How do we push for change when institutions don't want to? In the UK the University and College Union is on STRIKE to fight for the soul of the university and that means PhDiva Xine is too. Xine interviews Dr. Francesca Brooks abo…

it's time for a wellness check! PhDivas Liz and Xine talk about getting sick while navigating challenges as new faculty in STEM and the humanities -- and adulting. What are our new privileges and limitations on our research and advocacy? It's also a wellness check for the health of academia. Just because you are well does not mean the system is wor…

In the eyes of Western art all brown girls are the same. "Annah the Javanese" by the famous artist Paul Gauguin depicts a nude young brown girl with a monkey at her feet. She was his "mistress." In her PhD in Visuals Cultures Indonesian artist Khairani Barokka (Goldsmiths) uses her own art practice to question the inconsistent histories about Annah…

None of us in STEM or humanities should ever take libraries for granted! PhDiva Liz Wayne interviews Dr. Elaine Westbrook (Vice Provost of UNC Chapel-Hill Libraries) about the knowledge economy, peer review, and the invisible, exorbitant cost of journals. Scientists pay to have their articles published and then their universities can spend up to $4…

More about PhDiva Liz's new job! What happens to your personal life when you get that coveted academic job and have to move away? We advance in our careers but family advance in age. Liz and Xine talk about how the academic job market affects dating and family. How are we treated professionally and socially if we are single versus coupled academics…

PhDiva Liz is now a tenure track Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon in the Departments of Chemical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering! After preparing for the job market, how do you prepare for the anxieties of negotiation and starting the job? In this first part, Liz talks to PhDiva Xine about the rapid professional growth that can only ha…

Are Asians apolitical? What is the term "Asian American" anyway? PhDiva Xine talks to Rachel Kuo of the Asian American Feminist Collective about racial identity in online spaces and histories of Asian American political organizing. Rachel gives us insight into the latest wave of digital activism in the Asian diaspora galvanized by Black Lives Matte…

Grad school is trash for POC. The whisper campaign of academic trauma. Ciarra Jones's essays went viral in 2018, drawing from her experiences during her MA at Harvard Divinity School. This is not just about white antiBlackness or white fear about speaking out, but also how BIPOC students can internalize their own oppression and undermine others und…

Who was actually scandalized by the 'scandal' about rich people using their money to get their questionably gifted kids into elite American higher education? PhDiva Xine discusses structural inequalities in US and UK higher education with Maryam Toorawa who works in Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion and whose experiences span Cornell, Bryn Mawr, O…

It's application season! PhDivas Dr. Liz Wayne and Dr. Xine Yao share strategies for applying to graduate school in the humanities and STEM -- and how to make an informed decision about whether to apply at all. A how-to advice episode that reveals disciplinary differences amidst the shared stresses of the application process.…

Why are the PhDivas interested in tarot cards and the art of divination? PhDivas Liz and Xine separately delved into tarot: this is their first full conversation about their practices of self-care. The classic Western deck has been reimagined by disenfranchised peoples. Xine draws from her research about the importance of QTPOC tarot, especially th…

Poetry can be for everyone! PhDiva Xine interviews 2017 Green College Writer-in-Residence Anne Simpson about dying well, pedagogy, and publishing -- and lifting heavy weights as a feminist act. Winner of prestigious Canadian literature awards like the Griffin, Anne has published poetry, novels, and essays. Featuring brief segments with Tiara Kerr (…

How can we address global inequalities in this era of climate change? What disciplines, methods can we use – and how can we do this research ethically, collaboratively? UBC Forestry PhD student Saori Ogura is working with Indigenous peoples in Zimbabwe and the Himalayas to support their knowledges about traditional nutritious crops as a counter to …

Here come the trolls! Degrees, peer-reviewed publications, respect in the field -- markers of academic respectability do not shield scholars, especially BIPOC women, when people don't want to hear what we have to say. Remember PhDiva Xine's naivete in our previous episode? A month after recording, she tweeted a critique about Asian American appropr…

From ABD to the verge of becoming faculty: PhDivas Liz and Xine have been doing this podcast for 3 years strong! We had no idea what impact, good or bad, this might have on our lives as junior scholars. In this episode we reflect upon public scholarship from scicomm to public humanities to TED Talks. We're proud to build a public stage to help rais…

Geosciences are the least diverse of all STEM fields. But is it enough to track statistics about gender and race given the discipline's colonial, masculinist history? Quantitative scientists experiment with qualitative methods in order to examine experiences at a Canadian geoscience conference. PhDiva Xine interviews marine biologist Sara Cannon an…

The 1970 student massacre at Kent State is iconic in the United States and beyond. Days before the 2018 anniversary, at least 65 students at Aligarh Muslim University in India were brutalized by the police for peacefully protesting the police dismissal -- without charges -- of the armed Hindu nationalists who had threatened their campus. PhDiva Xin…

PhDiva Xine is moving to London, England as a #NewProf! Liz and Xine catch up after an exhausting spring to talk about Xine's new position as Lecturer at University College London, differences between STEM and humanities public outreach, illusions of meritocracy -- and complicated feelings to kind cliches. "I always knew you would make it." "Are yo…

Creating or conjuring? Junior scholars Emmanuelle Andrews and Katrina Sellinger were inspired by a public dialogue on the work of words between poet Dionne Brand and critic Christina Sharpe moderated by writer David Chariandy. Emmanuelle and Katrina co-edited a special issue of The Capilano Review extending that conversation on Blackness through th…

"Dead, drunk, or dancing": Kavelina SnowGiggles Torres​ (Yup’ik/Iñupiaq/Athabascan) seeks to challenge the usual media representations of Indigenous peoples. PhDiva Xine Yao​ interviews Kavelina about her work as a writer and filmmaker selected for the Sundance NativeLab Fellowship. What can narrative do that documentaries can't? Yugumalleq/Shades …

Who gets cited in your discipline? What if exploring that question led to death threats? "Why these professors are warning against promoting the work of straight, white men" is the Washington Post's take on Drs. Carrie Mott(Rutgers) and Daniel Cockayne (UWaterloo)'s peer-reviewed article on the politics of citation. The alt-right was not happy. PhD…

Race is messy, literally and figuratively, as Professor Brigitte Fielder (Wisconsin-Madison) argues in her project on the non-linear transferability of race in nineteenth-century America. Shakespeare's Othello in America became a minstrel play warning against the dangers of miscegenation -- what does it mean with Othello's blackface makeup begrimes…

How do children of immigrants survive in the wake of diaspora? Punjabi is Canada's 5th most spoken language. As a PhD student in Asian Studies at UBC, Kiran Sunar reads, translates, and speaks multiple languages as a part of reclaiming Punjabi literary forms from Orientalism. Kiran and PhDiva Xine discuss Rupi Kaur and the power of Instagram poetry…

How can we empower teen girls of color? PhDivas Liz and Xine talk to Eden and Ellisa Oyewo about how their C.O.R.E. work supports girls in those formative years before university. These sisters from Indiana collaborate from different cities and careers (engineering vs. fashion) to create and run C.O.R.E. (Creating Opportunity to Reach Empowerment),…

800,000 undocumented young people in the US will be endangered if the DACA(Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program ends. PhDivas Liz and Xine interview DREAMer Dory Castillo, an amazing undergrad furthering children's science education who hopes to become a physicist herself. But because of her undocumented status, she has to live with the …