What is public scholarship? And, if it’s something you value as an academic, how do you house the resources you want to share online? Dr. Ben Railton and Dr. Vaughn Joy are featured in this episode of The Social Academic podcast. Jennifer van Alstyne asks them about their just-launched public website collaboration, Black and White and Read All Over.
Who do you hope visits your website? How do you hope they engage with what you share with them? When this married couple wanted a permanent space for their public scholarship, they chose to create it together. A special thank you to Dr. Walter Greason for sharing #ScholarSunday would make for a great podcast episode! I’m delighted to have these two on the show for you just in time for the launch of their new website. Congratulations!
This episode was broadcast live on September 29, 2025.
This episode will be available on Spotify soon. English captions for the video and a full text transcription will be added for you in the next 1-2 weeks. Thank you.
Ben Railton is Professor of English Studies, Director of Graduate English, and Coordinator of American Studies at Fitchburg State University. He’s the author of six books, most recently Of Thee I Sing: The Contested History of American Patriotism (2021). He also contributes the bimonthly Considering History column to the Saturday Evening Post. He’s most proud to be Dad to two college student sons, Aidan and Kyle; and husband to his badass wife and website co-host Vaughn.
Dr. Vaughn Joy
Vaughn Joy is an independent researcher and recent graduate with a PhD in History from University College London. Her first book, Selling Out Santa: Hollywood Christmas Films in the Age of McCarthy, explores how Hollywood manipulated the American Christmas holiday for socially conservative ends in the post-war, early Cold War period in response to federal pressures on the motion picture industry. Her other work concerns McCarthyism, Hollywood business practices and politics, and media literacy of pop culture.
The site, called Black and White and Read All Over, also welcomes announcements from other scholars to share their achievements, upcoming events, and forthcoming publications to promote academic pride and joy in our community.
Academic voices should be heard. Are you open to sharing yours? This episode of The Social Academic is about podcasting. Podcast host, coach, and producer, Cheryl Lau joins me to talk about podcasting for academics like you.
Have you been a guest on a podcast? Have you thought about starting your own podcast as an academic? Much of this conversation is advice for people who want to be guests on the show.
Cheryl Lau is the host of the EDIT HISTORY podcast, podcast content strategist, and podcast producer.
Cheryl started her own podcast in 2020. Her show was shortlisted for the 2024 Asia Podcast Awards (by Radioinfo Asia) in the “Best Money and Business Podcast” category and won the 2023 Golden Crane Award (by the Asian American Podcasters Association) in the “Best Entrepreneur/Solopreneur Podcast” category.
Today, she helps business owners, consultants, and creators build a podcast content strategy that resonates with their audience, differentiates their brand, and establishes their position in the industry.
She also works with organizations and established shows through podcast production. From ideation and guest prep to editing, publishing, and promotion, Cheryl oversees every stage of podcast production.
Dr Lily Rosewater designs websites, brand assets, and has a service for social media on demand at her company, Pitch Science. I knew she’d be a great expert to share with you. She joins me live from Australia to talk about what it means to be a visible expert for scientists and researchers.
Lily is an expert for scientist websites, social media, and branding through her company, Pitch Science. What about you? What would it mean to be more visible as an expert yourself? We talk about how many academics are known in their communities, but hidden online. Are you one of the HiddenExperts™? Whether it’s been intentional for you or not, you may want people to find you and your research online. Lily can help you too.
This interview will be also be shared on Spotify soon.
Bio
Dr Lily Rosewater is a science communicator, neuroscientist, and founder of Pitch Science. Armed with experience in both scientific research and digital marketing, Lily helps life science organisations and individual scientists share their brilliant ideas with the public to produce meaningful change.
Lily Rosewater, PhD
At Pitch Science, she turns science into stories through her purposeful, strategic, and human-centred online science content. Lily’s branding and website design services transform HiddenExperts™️ into VisibleExperts, so that scientists and science brands are ready to guide online conversations and get their work seen by those who matter. She is also empowering scientists to do science communication themselves and extend their reach beyond traditional academic channels with science communication training sessions and her Pitch Lab community. Because the more research expertise is shared online, the more it benefits everyone.
What do you dream about your online presence that you’re not at now? Is there something you think you want in the future, but you just can’t see it happening? Feel like it will take more work than you have capacity for right now?
That’s how I felt about my blog/podcast/updating my website. At one point, I felt not good about each of these things. You see, website updates are something that can happen anytime. For professors that might include adding a new publication or speaking engagement.
But when there are substantive changes you dream about? Or a new project? Sometimes that list of to-do’s can add up. That makes it more than updating what you already have.
For your online presence, that might look like doing an overhaul of your LinkedIn profile. Writing a new academic bio or faculty profile. Doing a professional photoshoot for photos of you.
So what sparked taking action for me? Doing it for myself wasn’t enough. It’s when I thought about who this would help, the people who were involved. Which is you! The readers! And all the academics to come.
I was open about the fact that I was behind on this with my friends, Brittany Trinh and Jennifer Ho. They happened to need to update their websites too. I ended up hosting a coworking day for us. It was fun to do it together, each of us using our energy towards better communication. Sharing a clear representation of who we are on our websites is always a good use of time.
That’s true for clients I work with on their websites. We’re doing it together. The process of dreaming can make it beautiful. If you have a friend or colleague who is also interested in their online presence, I encourage you to do it together and cheer each other on too.
That’s one thing I love about websites: it allows me to create an open source trove of articles and interviews that people can find, and people do find, even years after they’ve been shared.
I’m sharing this story with you because of what came after my redesign, when there was no more to-do list and I had space to think and dream again. That’s when creative opportunity sparked.
I want to have more conversations with professors, grad students, researchers, the people who help them… because telling our own stories is really powerful.
When we can build community and share what we’re open about with people in ways that could help them, we have to make that work for our lives. It has to be doable within our creative constraints, equipment, budget, tech, skills, and time. There are all these things that might impact how we feel about our dreams.
For me, having my podcast has always been not consistent. I don’t release episodes on a set schedule. I don’t have the regular publishing schedule that I admire in other podcasters. But I love being able to share in these more accessible ways.
I love that you can experience an interview in written form, or watch it on YouTube, or check it out on Spotify. Creating in written, audio, and video format makes it interesting for me to create and it helps more people. I have the capacity to do that. Consistency is the only thing I sacrificed.
Actually, I remember my first time being open to being on video for my podcast (which had been audio only for 1+ year). I interviewed Dr. Ruth C. White about being on video and TV. She shared a story about pitching herself to the local TV station in the middle of the night. In the morning, she had an invitation to appear on their show that day as an expert on mental health.
I thought, ‘Wow! I’m so glad I was open to trying out putting myself out there when I didn’t know if I was going to stick with it.’ To be honest, I thought I’d go back to audio and leave YouTube. Nothing was set in stone, except my willingness to try.
When the spark came that I wanted to highlight more people on The Social Academic this year, I realized my current process of getting episodes out wasn’t going to be within my capacity.
I’d been teaming up with an audio engineer, Sir Nic, and my husband, Matthew, was doing the video editing. We had a process we were happy with that worked for a long time. But the time frame to get episodes out wouldn’t have allowed me to highlight all the people that I had dreamed about.
That’s why The Social Academic interview series is now a live-first format. And honestly? That kinda makes me laugh. It brings up a memory of a friend from college, Jose, who was a YouTuber. He was well known enough that some people recognized him. And he made it work, recording in his college dorm room. Jose used to livestream on a platform called YouNow, which is how I met one of my favorite DJs. And, where I first forayed into livestreaming.
At the time, I was deep into research for my creative thesis, a collection of poetry based on the pianist, Glenn Gould. Gould had a fascinating view of the relationship between audience and performer, and became reclusive later in life. I was a singer. And my own relationship with performance had shifted. It was like better understanding Gould helped me make a more informed decision for myself.
I no longer wanted to sing for people in person. But I was curious about how musicians were opening themselves up to performing virtually. It seemed like a different relationship, one that created distance while also sharing this more intimate personal side of the musician livestreaming. And the musicians? They seemed mostly relaxed.
I wanted to explore how I felt performing live to strangers. It touches me to think back to that moment of bravery because opening yourself up can be scary for many people. It certainly was for me. I tried livestreaming a few times. I even got a couple virtual tips. And while my livestreaming experience on YouNow was shortlived, it opened up my mind to what it meant to hold space for people. And, to create space for yourself too.
Sometimes, the things we try out aren’t your dreams. But they help other people. Maybe they build your capacity. Or, help you to better understand yourself.
While I never dreamed about being a livestreamer, it really works with the kind of openness I am hoping we can create for each other in that conversation when we are live on The Social Academic interview series.
LIVE ON THE SOCIAL ACADEMIC
P.S. There is another live on YouTube this evening! Dr. Lily Rosewater joins me to talk about what it means to be more visible as an expert.
When you want support to make your dream happen
What dreams do you have? What dreams have you been holding back? Is there something you’re open to, but you aren’t sure how to get there?
You don’t have to move forward with your dream now. I just love that you’re open to it for yourself in the future. If I’m more open to my dreams, if my guests are open to their dreams, if you the reader are more open to your dreams…we can better protect higher education in the ways that we care about it.
Research is important, teaching is important, faculty, and each person on campus has value.
I want people to be able to have a voice.
It’s ok if the way you dream about sharing your voice doesn’t feel accessible to you right now. There may be ways or opportunities for you in the future. Naming your dream now can be a gift to ourselves.
I want to wrap up with a personal story. My father-in-law, Bob Pincus, was one of my first clients back when I started The Academic Designer LLC in 2018. His online presence was not something he dreamed about. Social media in general was not a priority for him. He’s an art history professor, and a local celebrity here where he was art critic for the San Diego Union-Tribune for many years.
Whether social media was a priority for Bob or not, his audience of people who already care about and were connected with him, were on social media. Every time he posts on Facebook, people are excited to talk with him. Do you have a professor friend like that?
I’m sharing this story with you because Bob, who never loved social media, had a new dream recently. And actually this is funny, because none of us can remember what first sparked it. My mother-in-law, Georgie, says it was my idea. My husband, Matthew, says it was Bob’s. One day at the Costco in Carlsbad, California, we’re sitting at the outdoor bench having a slice of pizza. By the end of the slice, a plan for his YouTube channel was already in the works.
Someone who never dreamed about having a YouTube channel now has multiple episodes in progress. He’s sharing in meaningful ways with the public about art in America through video.
When Bob was laid off from paper, like many excellent journalists around the country were, people suggested he create something for himself. They said, “You should start a podcast!” or a blog. More recently he’s been encouraged to try Substack or a LinkedIn newsletter.
But you have to want it for yourself.
I’m so glad that when the spark for sharing on video came to Bob, he was open to the conversation. To turning the idea over in his head and seeing what we could make happen for him as a team. While you can totally start your YouTube channel on your own like I did, Bob knew he didn’t want to get there on his own. When you have an idea, it’s okay if you’re like Bob, thinking, “I need collaborators on this.” Maybe your idea is best solo, but it’s okay if you need a team to support each other too.
One professor I chatted with who dreams about a podcast to talk about her research field, shared that a reason she’s wanting to be more active on social media is in hopes of finding a co-host for that dream.
When we have a dream that feels like us and helps share our voice, it’s ok if you don’t know how to get there. These academics were all DIY for their YouTube. I’ve met podcasters who have started on their phone. I’ve met people whose university was able to support them in creating their podcast.
I want you to believe that if you don’t know how to do something, there’s an opportunity to explore your dream in the future when you’re ready.
What’s your dream, academics?
Here’s a few ideas for what you may dream about for yourself as a professor or researcher. You can help more people by being intentional about how you show up online. If it’s something you want for yourself? I’m excited for you. You’ve got this. Find resources on The Social Academic blog to help you.
Are you thinking about starting a podcast? I invited Dr. Anna Clemens to share her podcasting journey. We talk about how social media and online presence has changed for researchers in 2025. And, how storytelling can help people connect with your research in meaningful ways.
Dr. Anna Clemens is an academic writing coach who specializes in scientific research papers. She runs the Researchers’ Writing Academy, an online course where she helps researchers to get published in high-ranking journals without lacking structure in the writing process.
Jennifer van Alstyne: Hi everyone, this is Jennifer Van Alstyne. Welcome to the Social Academic Podcast. I’m here with Dr. Anna Clemens of the Researchers’ Writing Academy. Anna, I’m so happy to have you here today. First, because you’re my friend and we’ve been trying to do this for multiple years now. I’m so happy! And second because I want to share the program that you’ve created for scientists to help them write better. It’s actually something I’ve recommended to clients of mine, something clients of mine have participated in. So I wanted to share you with everyone who listens to the podcast. Would you please introduce yourself?
Dr. Anna Clemens: Yeah, of course. Thank you so much for having me. And I’m super excited. And it’s been such a joy having some of your clients in the program.
I run a program called the Researchers’ Writing Academy, where we help researchers, well, kind of develop a really structured writing process so they can get published in the journals they want to get published in. We kind of look a bit more toward top-tier journals, high-impact journals. But honestly, what we teach kind of helps you wherever you want to go.
I have a background in chemistry. So my PhD’s in chemistry and I transitioned into writing after that. So it’s a really fun way to be able to combine kind of my scientific knowledge with writing and helping folks to get published and make that all really time efficient.
Jennifer: Gosh, that’s amazing. I think that I did not have a lot of writing support when I was in grad school. And I really felt like even though I’m an excellent writer, like I’m a creative writer, like that’s what I went to school for.
Anna: You write poetry.
Jennifer: I write poetry and I think I’m a good academic writer, but I feel like I had to teach myself all of that. And it was a lot of correction after something was already submitted in order to bring it closer to what was actually publishable.
Anna: Right.
Jennifer: I lost so much time by not knowing things. So I love that you created a program to support people who maybe aren’t getting the training that they need to publish in those high impact journals.
Anna: Yeah, because that’s so common. Like, honestly, who gets good academic writing training? That’s really almost nobody.
I often see even people who do go on, do some kind of course of their university if they offer some kind of course. They’re often not really so focused on the things that I’m teaching, which is like a lot of storytelling and a lot like being efficient with your writing, like kind of the step by step. You kind of often know just like academic English, how do I sound good? And I think honestly, this is less important than knowing how to really tell a story in your paper and having that story be consistent and not losing time by all the like edits and rewrites, etc., that are so frustrating to do.
Storytelling for Researchers and Scientists
Jennifer: Hmm, you brought up storytelling. That’s really insightful.
As a creative writer, story is so important to the words that we create and how people can connect with them. Why is storytelling important for researchers?
Anna: Well, I think it’s because we’re all humans, right? So we just as humans, really need storytelling to be able to access information in the best way and to connect to that information and to kind of put it into the kind of frameworks that we have already in our minds.
This is what a lot of researchers really overestimate is like, your research is so incredibly specific, right? It’s so much, like that thing to you, it’s all like when you’re doing it, you’re like, of course you know every detail about it. And you just forget how little other people know. It’s even if they’re in the same field because we always think, “Oh, no, everyone knows what I know.” Also a bit this feeling of like, not quite realizing like, it’s also called like the experts curse I think, when you are an expert in something, and you don’t realize how little other people know. And you kind of undervalue what you know.
So anyway, if you really want your papers to be read, if you want to get published, you need to be able to, to make it accessible to like the journal editor, right? The peer reviewers, but also the readers later, they need to be able to understand the data in a way that makes sense to them. And I think that’s where storytelling comes in. Also, it really helps with structuring the writing process. Like honestly, if you think about storytelling first, the really nice side effect is your writing process will be a lot easier because you don’t have to go back and edit quite so many times.
Jennifer: Oh, that’s fascinating. So not only does it improve how the research is being communicated It improves the process of writing it too.
Anna: I think so. Yeah, because when you’re clear on the story, everything is clear in your head from the start. And you don’t need to kind of . . . I mean, when you write a paper for the first time, or even people who’ve written a few papers, they still sometimes start writing with the introduction. And it’s such a waste of time. Like they just start at the start, right? And then they end up like deleting all those paragraphs and all those words after when they actually have written so much that they then after a while understand the story that they want to tell. And instead, what I’m suggesting is like, define the story first. And I like guide people through how to do that.
Because I think the problem is you don’t really know how to do it when you don’t have like a framework for it. You have kind of the framework there from the start. So you know what the story is and you don’t have to kind of figure out the story while you’re writing. Instead, you know what the story is and the way I’m teaching it, I’m like giving people prompts so that it’s really easy to define the story because also story is really elusive, I think. Or we use it in this elusive way often when we like we kind of use it as like a throwaway term. Oh, yeah, you you should tell a story in your paper. And you go like, “Yeah, I guess. But what does that mean?” I’m trying to like give a definition for that. So that is like really clear. Okay?
Jennifer: I appreciate that. I think so many people aren’t sure what it means. And even if they think they know what it means, they don’t necessarily know how it applies to their scientific writing. So that’s really interesting.
Researchers’ Writing Academy
Jennifer: I want to talk about podcasts, but actually, since we’re already talking about program stuff right now, I’m curious about the format of your program because people who are listening to this may not be familiar with your work. And I want to make sure that they get to hear about all the cool things that they get if they join.
Anna: Yeah, the Researchers’ Writing Academy is very comprehensive.
Jennifer: Yeah, in a good way.
Anna: It’s almost hard to tell people about it because there’s so much in there. So, what people get is like, there’s an online course, we call it the journal publication formula, that’s like the step-by-step system, walks you through online lessons that you can watch, super short digestible lessons that walk you through step-by-step. So you can just write your paper alongside the lessons.
And then because we noticed that you really may want some help actually writing in your day to day work, right? Because we’re also incredibly busy. And then it’s just helpful to have some kind of accountability, some community, and that’s what we offer as well. So we do a lot of things around accountability and we have like, cowriting sessions, for example, where we meet, we have six now, six per week across time zones.
Jennifer: Wow, that’s amazing! So if you’re anywhere in the world, there’s a chance that one of those six times during the day will work for you. Oh my gosh, that’s so cool.
Anna: Yeah. I mean, they should work. I mean for Europe and the US, most of them will work. Or not, but it depends where in the US you are, etc. But even like a few in Australia, there’s at least one per week that will work for you depending on how long you want to stay up. Some people do, we have one client who comes, he likes to do writing after his kids are in bed. So he loves nine to 10pm, you know, like, yeah. So yeah, there’s a lot. And we do like, writing retreats every now and again, and writing sprints. So we like offer a lot of support around that. And we have like a really lovely community that are so supportive. Actually, I just talked to one member today, and she just got promoted to full professor.
Jennifer: Exciting
Anna: And she was like, “I couldn’t have done it without this community.” This was so like, valuable, not only getting the feedback on her article, but also, just knowing that like, there’s the support. And that’s really, I mean, that’s so lovely for me to hear, because this is honestly what I dreamed of. This is what I wanted to build. And it’s really nice knowing that people do, you know, really, not only reach career goals, but have a supportive community because academia can be a little toxic.
Jennifer: Yeah, yeah, there’s so many reports that have come out and said, mental health struggles, toxicity, it’s consistent. Yeah.
Anna: And honestly, writing plays a big part in that, because like, kind of the way we are normally not talking about writing. I think writing like, it’s, you sometimes see like, more seasoned academics. They sometimes are really good at writing and then act as if they have it all figured out, but not share their process. So you as like a novice writer think, “Shit, I should have figured it out. Like, why do I not know how this works?”
Jennifer: This is easy for them.
Anna: Yeah, exactly. The other day, someone said to me, “Yeah, I know this professor and he just writes his paper while I’m talking to him at a conference.” And I’m like, “Oh, okay, this is an interesting process.”
Jennifer: Wow. Like, it’s so clear in his brain that he can focus on that and a conversation at the same time. Fascinating.
Anna: Fascinating. And honestly, you don’t have to do that. But she kind of thought like, “This is who I have to be. This is how I have to do it.” That creates so much pressure. And yeah, writing just hits like, emotionally, it’s really hard, right? When we feel like we are procrastinating, when we have really low confidence in our writing and just feel really disappointed in ourselves because we’re like overly perfectionistic, can’t send stuff off, keep like, you know, refining sentences. It’s just really, really hard.
This is really why a community is so beautiful when we can all just open up about how hard it is and also give each other tips. Like, I just love when people, you know, share also what’s working for them. And like, down to little techniques. Like the other day, someone was sharing in the community about how they started having like their Friday afternoons as like a margin in their calendar. So, if they didn’t get, you know, to all the things they had done, if there was any derailing event, they still had like time on a Friday. A little hack like that, right?
That just like makes you more productive, makes you just honestly feel better about your work. Because we’re really tough on ourselves often. Like we’re really harsh and just, you know, having like a community that has this kind of spirit of being kind to yourself and working with your brain and not against it. Yeah, that’s really, really . . . that’s a really lovely place. Really supportive.
Jennifer: That sounds amazing. I’m curious about who should join your program because it sounds like it’s so supportive. It sounds like there’s community and accountability and training. So, I love all of that, but there’s probably some people who the program’s not right for. So, like, maybe who shouldn’t join and who should definitely join?
Anna: Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean, it is in terms of like career stage, it’s pretty open from PhD student up to professor. And we have all of those kind of career stages in the program. The biggest group is assistant professors, just so you know, like who you can expect to be in the program. And also the PhD students who are in there are often older. It’s really interesting. They’re often like second kind of career type students who maybe have, you know, chosen that path a little later in life. Just a little side note. It’s kind of interesting.
Jennifer: I think that makes so much sense because if I’m going back for like a PhD later on, I’m like, “I’m going to get all the support that I can to make the most of this time.” And joining a program like yours would make so much sense to me.
Anna: Yeah, they’re probably also busier most of the time because their parents or other stuff going on in their lives already.
Jennifer: Yeah, that’s what makes it easier to have time for like the life and the people that you care about because you already have these processes in place.
Anna: Yeah, yeah. So as to who shouldn’t join or who this wouldn’t be a good fit for, we don’t actually serve researchers in the humanities. So there’s this really science-based, social sciences included. And you know, physical sciences, life science, earth science, all the sciences we are super happy to have inside the program just because the general publication formula is super focused on just that type of research and really honestly quite focused on like original research papers, even though we have members who write review papers using it because honestly, the process isn’t very different. But we are like, just the examples, everything is from like original research papers. So just FYI.
Otherwise, I would say like we’re really super supportive and we don’t have like a lot of this like hustle culture, you know. This is all about, we don’t believe in like, having to wake up at 4am to have your whole three hour morning routine, including writing done, because a lot of us like have kids or have other kinds of commitments. So there is a lot of like kind of understanding that, you know, all of this has to work for real life. And not just for, I don’t know, people who have, yeah, men I guess who have a lot of support in the background traditionally, right? This is how research has been done. And yeah, even though we do have really lovely men in the program as well. So it’s not just women, but I guess this is kind of the approach that, yeah, we have in the community, in the academy.
Jennifer: I love that. So not hustle culture. More let’s learn these processes and have accountability together so that we can move towards this goal of publishing with kindness.
Anna: Yeah. It’s so funny, like this being kind. I mean, we often say like, “Be kind to yourself,” because sometimes we don’t achieve the goals we set, often we don’t achieve the goals we set ourselves, right? And what I always say is it’s a data point. Like, this was a really good data point this week, because just reflect on what happened. Oh, did your child get sick? Oh, there you go. So maybe you now need to have a process, what happens if my child gets sick? Because then, you can’t plan that, right? So you have to have, or it’s good to have in your kind of system, in your writing system, in your writing practice, that you account for that. Some kind of strategy, what you do when that happens. Or like, this took me a lot longer to complete, like, I thought I would get my introduction section done this week, but actually, I didn’t. Well, really good data point. Actually, maybe it takes you longer.
Look at how where you spend the time doing this section. This is really good to know for next time. Actually, maybe schedule one or two days more for this. So that’s kind of like the approach, the vibe that like is in there. So it’s not so, it’s not harsh.
Jennifer: Yeah, I like that vibe. That’s my kind of vibe.
Anna: Mine too. Yeah, mine too. And it really crystallized for me because I once was in a business coaching program where the vibe was really different. You probably remember me talking about this because I did tell you at the time, and it was so awful for me. And I really. . . but until then, it was really a bummer because I spent a lot of money on it.
Jennifer: And you’re like, “My community needs kindness and support for each other.
Anna: This was my big learning. Apparently, I needed to spend a lot of money to really have this like so, so clear that this is not for me. Like the bro-y culture is not for me. I need the kindness. Because otherwise, it doesn’t work. I don’t work like that if someone tells me I have to, I don’t know, have all these non-negotiables everyday.
Jennifer: Yeah, like change who you are.
Anna: Yeah, like you just have to do it. Like it’s just about the discipline. You know, I don’t think that works. I honestly don’t think it works in the long term. Like maybe you can force yourself for like a few months or years and then you’re burning out or something. Like, I just don’t see how this is a sensible approach.
Jennifer: No. And I remember at the time you mentioned that you felt burned out. Like you were being affected by the culture that you were experiencing. So creating a warm culture for people inside your program, the Researchers’ Writing Academy is wonderful. Everyone gets to benefit from your research.
Anna: Right? Yea!
Anna’s podcasting journey
Jennifer: So I want to chat a little bit about online presence because I mean, we met online, we mostly communicate online, but also like you have taken some actions this year in particular to have a stronger online presence through a new avenue, which is podcasting. I’m curious because when I started my podcast, it was like not very intentional. It was like, “Oh, I just better record this thing and like, it’s going to make it like a little more accessible than if it was just in writing.” And the podcast kind of evolved into a regular series after I had already decided to start it. Whereas you came in more with a plan, you had purpose, you had drive to do more episodes than I could imagine. And so what was it like to kind of get that spark of an idea that like, I want a podcast?
Anna: Yeah, I’ve had this, I mean, I had this desire for a long time. Many, many years. I always wanted to have a podcast.
Jennifer: Really?
Anna: Really because I listen to podcasts a lot. Like I’m really into them. And years ago, someone told me you would have such a good voice for podcasts. I was like, really? I don’t, because when you listen to your own voice, you’re like, “No, I don’t think so.” And I still don’t know whether this is really true, but I wanted to be more online. Like kind of, I wanted to have an online presence that wasn’t just social media.
Because honestly, I have such a weird relationship to social media, myself. It does like cognitively do something to my brain that isn’t always good, you know. Like hanging out there too much or getting sucked in, especially back on Twitter, now on Bluesky it’s a little bit like that too. There’s sometimes a lot of negativity. And I feel like people are too harsh, coming back to the being too harsh. I just can’t take it. Like, it’s not for me, but also just the fact that there’s just a lot going on there.
I wanted to be available to people somewhere else. And a podcast and I did actually simultaneously, like launch my podcast on YouTube as well. So it’s like a video podcast. That just made sense to me. Like, that just felt really aligned with what I like to consume, what I think my ideal clients like to consume. And where I also felt like I can like express myself, I guess, in a really good way. I mean, I do love writing, I do actually have a blog too. But it’s almost like when you have a blog, unless you’re like really, really good at SEO, which is a little hard in my niche, to be honest. Like nobody reads it, right? Unless you like amplify it through social media.
Jennifer: Actively sharing it. It’s its own marketing.
Anna: Yeah, yeah. So it’s still like social media connected. And I kind of wanted to have another avenue. Anyway, yeah. Talking also, I also like talking. So podcast made sense.
Jennifer: That’s amazing. When I started my podcast, it was kind of just like, you know, going on zoom and hitting record. What is your process like? Are there other people involved? What is the kind of behind the scenes for your podcast?
Anna: Yes, I have solo episodes. And I also have episodes with former clients or current clients actually, like members of the research as writing academy or alumni. And I also had one with one of my team members, our kind of client experience manager, Yvonne, where we talked about community. And I also had you on, right, as a guest expert. I think you’re the only guest expert actually we’ve had so far.
Jennifer: I feel so special. That’s amazing.
Anna: So yeah. The process for interviews, I would think of questions ahead of time. And we, for example, then chatted about the questions. This is also what I did with Yvonne. Just have a quick chat. I think both times it was written, like through Slack, just like, “Hey, does this make sense? Where do we want to go with this? Okay, maybe this should be a different discussion. Let’s focus on that.” And similar, actually, with the clients I interviewed. I would just send them a list of questions and be like,” Hey, you don’t need to prepare anything, but if you want to do” and then basically hop on and have a conversation and it’d be quite natural. And like this one where, you know, you don’t necessarily have to follow a script, you just go where it takes you.
For my solo episodes, it’s a little bit different where I do write an outline. And honestly, like, what surprised me was this took a lot of time. Even when I knew what I wanted to say, and maybe this is me being too perfect, too much of a perfectionist, because I would go back. So I’d write the outline, I would go back the next day or the day after I read it again and have more ideas. I’d be like, “No, no, this should be like this.” So, it took me a lot of time. But then also, I think the outlines got better and better and better. And then I was really, you know, proud of the episodes. I was like, “Yeah, I really expressed this, I think, in a good way.” Because what I did afterwards then is I took this transcript from that episode and turned those into a blog post.
Then with the blog post, I’m like, “Yeah, they’re really meaty. There’s so much in there.” Like, there’s so much longer than my other blog posts that were just blog posts without podcast episodes. So that was really interesting to me. Just like, you know, understanding I guess a little bit more about the process of writing or synthesizing ideas and concepts. And yeah, after the outline, I would record on my own, I would record the episodes with that outline like in front of me. So kind of a bullet point outline.
Jennifer: It sounds like your brain really likes the outlining process. And when you come back the second time, you have ideas to flush it out and tell the story even better. That’s really cool.
Anna: Yeah, it was honestly really fun writing those outlines. Because recording sometimes, especially in the beginning, was a little more stressful than I expected. It was shockingly stressful because I’m on video a lot. I thought it would be rather easy to record cause of my experience. And I think it would have been pretty easy if I just had done audio, but because I was also doing video, it felt a lot harder because it’s really hard to read an outline and look in the camera at the same time.
Jennifer: Oh yeah.
Anna: Like really, really hard. And I also couldn’t spend even more time like rehearsing the outline to the point where I didn’t need to look at it anymore. Like I didn’t feel like that made sense. And I was really struggling with that. And I was just like, being a little unhappy about it. Because when I talk, like when I’m like, I’m on a lot of calls, you know, inside the Academy, for example, or like interviews like this. And I find, for me it’s quite natural already to look at the camera. Like, I look at the camera a lot. But when I have an outline, you know, it’s like you do look at it. It was so hard. And actually, you helped me a lot with that.
Yeah, because I was sharing this, that I was really unhappy with my recordings because of, I wasn’t looking at the camera. And you said, “Well, look, so many people aren’t even recording video for that exact reason. And you’re putting something out that is less perfect than you hope will still be so useful to the people, to people watching it. Honestly, that doesn’t matter.” And then I was like, “Yeah, this is like perfectionism.” It was all right. I just wanted to have it perfect. And I had a different standard for myself. But I didn’t need to be there. Like I was just not there. And that was totally fine. It didn’t need to be quite as polished as I thought maybe it should be.
Jennifer: Yeah, and I think that we don’t give ourselves enough grace for like our first things, right? Like the first episodes, like the first launch of something new. Like, we want it to be really great because it’s new and because it represents us. But sometimes like, we’re just not there in terms of our own practice or our own skills, like something may need to build or improve for us to get to where we dream about being. And that’s okay. I really didn’t think, I didn’t have those negative feelings when I started my podcast, but so many of my clients and so many of the people that I’ve met along the way have talked about the first maybe five or six episodes being just such a struggle.
Looking at themselves on video, listening to themselves speak, doing the editing themselves. It brought up all of those feelings about like watching themselves and what it would be like for other people to watch them. But the truth is that like you are watching yourself and doing all of those things more than anyone else is. Like, if someone else is watching it, they may not even listen to or watch the entire thing. And if they are, maybe they’re doing something else, like cleaning up their room. You know, if it’s a podcast, it’s not something that people will always sit there and like stare at your face and look at everything you did that was wrong. That’s what we’re doing.
Anna: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You’re so right.
Jennifer: For me, this year I have Sir Nic who does all of this kind of sound editing for me and he’s here in the virtual studio with us making sound levels all good. And then my husband Matthew does the video editing. So I don’t have to look at myself anymore or listen to myself. And it is so nice! It’s, oh my goodness, it’s such a relief for me to have those things off my plate. Do you have support on your team for podcast things or is it just the people who are working on, you know, the different kind of accountability coaching and things that are in the program?
Anna: Yeah, I did have support. So I outsource the editing, video and audio editing.
Jennifer: Love that.
Anna: I couldn’t have done it myself, honestly, like not so much. I mean, it takes a lot of time. I think people often underestimate just how much time this takes. And especially if you want the audio to be kind of good, you do want someone, an audio engineer I think. This was important to me to have like a decent microphone, decent audio. So I actually invested quite a lot in this space. I started recording in my former office. I’m not in there now anymore, but it had really high ceilings. So I put all these sound panels up, these like boards and I bought curtains that I now brought into this room as well to like reduce the echo. And that was just worth it to me. But yeah, I did have support. And then in-house, like on my team, my operations manager, she also helped me with the podcast. Like she would do a lot of like even reviewing episodes and suggesting maybe further edits. So I didn’t have to watch myself very much.
Jennifer: Oh, that’s great.
Anna: She would also take out little like clips from the episode that we then put on social media. Like as YouTube shorts, for example.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Anna: Yeah, so it was a really, really smooth process with a lot of support.
Jennifer: Yeah, getting support was something that I didn’t think my podcast deserved in the beginning, but now I feel like my listeners do. My listeners deserve that. If I can keep doing it for them, I’m going to. So I’m glad we got to chat about that because a lot of people are like, “Oh, I’m just going to go on Zoom and record.” And then maybe they’re surprised when the editing process is a lot longer. But also the first few episodes, if you’re starting something new like editing, like audio stuff, like even just being on video, it’s going to be hard. And it might not be as good as you want it to be at first, but it’s going to get better. It’s going to get better. Oh, before we… Oh, sorry. Go ahead.
Anna: No, no, no. I just said so true.
Social media for academics post-Elon
Jennifer: Well, I wanted to chat about the social media landscape and how things have been changing since Elon took over Twitter. I know you are on Bluesky now. I would love to hear a little bit about your experience of that platform.
Anna: Yeah, I’m on Bluesky now and I’m not on X or Twitter anymore. I mean, I do still have the account, but I don’t check it anymore. Some people are still finding me through there, though. That’s kind of interesting. I see it in my data, but I haven’t logged in in like months. Bluesky is very similar to Twitter, honestly, in the sense of the type of conversations that are happening there. But at least for me, there’s a lot less engagement than there was. And I’m actually wondering whether a lot of academics gave up on social media after Twitter went downhill, because there was this like really great academic community on Twitter through which I guess we met.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Anna: Back in the day. And I don’t see that happening on Bluesky. Bluesky does have a few other features, like additional features though that I really like. Like the way you can customize your feed a lot better. You can create those lists. So if you’re new to Bluesky, you can just like, there’s probably a list for researchers in your field.
“I struggle with writing a compelling story that is interesting outside of my field, yet doesn’t oversell my data.” ✍️
Jennifer: Yeah, like the starter packs and the different lists you could put together.
Anna: Exactly, starter packs. That’s what it’s called. Yeah. So you can just like hit follow all and you already have a feed full of people you want to have in your feed. And getting started is kind of really cool on Bluesky. I do think, I don’t know, something is different about the algorithm over there, but I’m not an expert. I don’t really know, but it feels like not as much things are like going viral per se.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Anna: Maybe a little more one to one.
Jennifer: Yeah. Oh, that’s really interesting. When I when I first joined Bluesky, which was much later than everyone else. It was really just last month. I found that it was very quiet. I connected with the people that were like the most talkative on Twitter. I hadn’t run Sky Follower Bridge or any of the tools to help me get connected yet because I wanted to see what the platform was like naturally. Like if someone was just signing up for the first time without having been on Twitter. And I was able to find people pretty easily. Like the people that I most often talked to or connected with, guests on The Social Academic, those kinds of things. But I wasn’t finding conversations. Like the people who I knew from social media weren’t talking all that much. They weren’t posting original content the way that they had on other platforms.
And when I did run Sky Follower Bridge and found all of the people from Threads, from X, etc. I realized that like so many people had accounts that they just hadn’t connected with people yet. Like they, you know, maybe started their account during the big X exodus and then they connected with 12 people because that’s who they found when they first got there. And when they didn’t find their community, it’s like maybe they stopped logging in. And I think that’s really normal for people. Like you’re going to look for the warmth in the conversations or just like the people talking and watching it, being able to see it without even participating in it. Like if you don’t see when you get there, it’s kind of like, “Well, why am I going to spend time in this space?” I had to do a lot more work than I expected in order to find the conversations. And I had to connect with a lot more people without knowing that they were going to follow me back. Like without that anticipation in order for me to feel connected. But once I did that, once I was following, like I follow like over a thousand people now, once I did that, it started to feel like old Twitter to me. Like the community and conversation. Yeah, there’s a lot of people who aren’t talking there, but I was just surprised how much effort it took to get to that feeling. More than other platforms for me.
Anna: Do you enjoy it now? Like the way you liked Twitter?
Jennifer: You know, I don’t think I really enjoy any one social media platform over another anymore. I feel like my relationship with creating content has changed a lot in that I found more ease and I found less pressure and I found like good processes that work for me. And because of that, I don’t spend a lot of time on social media. Like I’m not on there browsing for conversations the way that I think I did when I was on X. Like old Twitter, I liked spending time there and jumping into conversations. And now social media is more, I don’t intentionally put in my day as much anymore. That’s what it is. And I like that. I like how my relationship with social media has changed. But no, I haven’t gone back to how I engaged in old Twitter, I think. What about you?
Anna: That makes sense. Yeah, it’s similar for me, actually. I have to say I go through phases with it. So I do put out like content on several platforms like Threads, Bluesky and LinkedIn and then like YouTube as shorts. And I do go in and kind of check, does anyone comment? Like is anyone starting a conversation? I do this several times a week. But I don’t get sucked in as much anymore, if ever. Yeah, and I’m like super intentional about the time I spend there, I guess.
Jennifer: How are you intentional?
Anna: Well, I kind of set myself a timer as well.
Jennifer: Oh, like a literal timer.
Anna: So I don’t let myself like do more than, I don’t know, five minutes per platform.
Jennifer: Really?!
Anna: If there is like, of course, if there is comments, like actual, interesting conversations to join, I will, you know, override, but I’m really trying not to, not to get sucked in because it’s so easy for me. I don’t know. My brain is really-
Jennifer: That is really smart. I’ve never set a timer for that short amount of time. I’ll be like 30 minutes, you know, 30 minutes a day. Like if I’m going to have a timer maybe that’s what I would set it for. But five minutes is so much more specific, direct. That would wake my brain up. I should try something like that if I get sucked in again.
Anna: Yeah, I like it. I do like it. And because now I feel like the social media landscape for academics has changed in a way. They’re used to be, or for me they’re used to be just Twitter. I was basically just on Twitter and I didn’t really do anything on any other platform whereas now it’s a lot more spread out. And, I don’t know, there’s good and bad things about that. But now I feel like, “Okay, I need to spend time on LinkedIn. I need to spend on Blue Sky and on Threads.” So, you know, I just can’t spend like that much time anymore on just one platform. So it has to be kind of a bit more time efficient.
Jennifer: Okay, so you’re on Bluesky, Mastodon, YouTube, LinkedIn-
Anna: I’m not on Mastodon. Threads.
Jennifer: Not on Mastodon. Threads, LinkedIn and YouTube.
Where can people find your blog and your podcast? I want people to be able to get connected with you after this.
Anna: Thank you so much for that lovely conversation. And it was so fun finally being a guest on your show.
Jennifer: I’m so happy. Anna, I am so happy to have shared the Researchers’ Writing Academy with people because I really believe in your program. I believe in the process. And I know that you’re someone who goes in and updates things and improves them. And so I’ve always recommended the Researchers’ Writing Academy to professors. And I really encourage you if you’re listening to this to check it out.
Jennifer receives no monies or gift when you sign up for the Researchers’ Writing Academy or any of the other recommendations she shares on The Social Academic.
Dr Anna Clemens is an academic writing coach who specializes in scientific research papers. She runs the Researchers’ Writing Academy, an online course where she helps researchers to get published in high-ranking journals without lacking structure in the writing process.
Sign up for Anna’s free training on how to develop a structured writing process to get published in top-tier journals efficiently.
Are you an academic open to making an impact with your research in creative ways? Dr. Walter Greason is back on The Social Academic podcast with artist, Tim Fielder. They created The Graphic History of Hip Hop, a graphic novel taking the education sector by storm. When I asked, “did you expect this kind of response from your book?” It was a definite no. The ripple effect of engagement and impact The Graphic History of Hip Hop is creating for students is inspiring.
Hi, I’m Jennifer van Alstyne. The Social Academic podcast shares interviews with academics and people in Higher Education. When The Graphic History of Hip Hop was announced, Walter and Tim got billions of views that has helped their book and style of sharing history reach people around the world. I’m excited to share this featured interview with you.
Jennifer van Alstyne: Hi everyone, I’m Jennifer van Alstyne and welcome to The Social Academic. Dr. Walter Greason is back for another interview and he brought his collaboration partner for The Graphic History of Hip Hop, Tim Fielder. I’m so happy you’re both here. Tim, would you introduce yourself for people?
Tim Fielder: Hello, I am Tim Fielder. I’m a visual Afrofuturist and graphic novelist who has had the pleasure to work with the endowed chair at Macalester College, Dr. Walter Greason.
Dr. Walter Greason: You’re hilarious, man.
Tim: We’re going to ride him like that. We’re going to ride him. He just got it about a month ago and every time, you used to be Dr. Walter, now he’s the endowed chair Dr. Walter Greason.
Jennifer: Oooh! [Laughing]
Tim: So we’ll see. So we’ve been riding him. He earned it though. I’m so proud of him. It makes me look good to work with Walter because Walter is so accomplished in what he does, not just being a hip hop scholar, generally a nice guy, a unashamedly justice, social justice warrior, and he keeps me, he’s an all-star, north star. And he makes all of us around him work harder. He makes us want to aspire to work harder. And by just the association alone, having done The Graphic History of Hip Hop has made me a better artist and has brought me, you know you think, “Oh, this would just be a freelance job.” Nah. Having done this book with Walter has exposed me to opportunities that I could not have dreamed up. So it has been a true, true ride.
Walter: I appreciate you.
Tim: He’s still crazy though, don’t get it mixed and twisted.
Walter: I appreciate you, you know, really. Anything I bring is a reflection of the people that I work with. And y’all are two of the folks that make me so inspired every single day. For Tim, the way his genius manifests in the production of the work. And I’ve seen it now firsthand, in person. God, its got to be like six years since we first did that thing with N Square. But man, like his ability to touch people’s soul and to move them, to find something extraordinary in themselves that they couldn’t see before he drew them. That, that is just a miracle every single time it happens.
And Jennifer, the work that you’ve done that I’ve seen you put together since our time back in New Jersey. You are doing that with these shows, with this effort to motivate people.
And I want to specifically congratulate you for the amazing series you’ve done recently with Sheena Howard. That’s another colleague of mine going back many years. And so just, this is like family for me to be with y’all. And I couldn’t do the kinds of things I try to do without y’all being out here in the world and showing me different ways to go about making things happen.
Collaboration of academic research and art
Jennifer: That really brings up this amazing collaboration that you did together. I’m curious, it sounds like you worked on something six years ago. What inspired your collaboration and decision to actually work together to create something different, to create something unique?
Tim: Go ahead Walter, you can start. I’ll hold the prop up.
Walter: So Graphic History of Hip Hop, we got invited to put that together by the New York City Public Schools in December of 2022. But prior to that, so Tim and I met in, um, it was Jackson, Mississippi at the Planet Deep South Afrofuturist Conference. Which was just a convocation of talent that has changed the world in, in very literal terms.
This was years before the Black Panther movie debuted. This was long before most people around the world knew what Afrofuturism was. So this was an event that was life-changing for everyone there just to be together, but Tim took the photo that symbolizes the event. And so many, many decades from now, when we are no longer here and people are telling the story of Afrofuturism, it’s going to be Tim’s. Not just his images, but his photography that actually tells the story of how the movement has grown and how it had this impact. That photo still lives in all of our hearts cause his skills with the selfie are unmatched. That was one of the moments where I was like, “This dude has got it. Whatever he’s got, I need to stay in touch and be a part of it.” A couple of years later I want to say 2020, 2021, we got invited by Reynaldo Anderson. No, 2022.
Tim: Oh yeah, I’m sorry. That was Yonkers.
Walter: Then we were trained in technically how to be futurists by a consulting group that works with the Air Force. They were working on how to imagine a world without nuclear weapons.
That’s what convinced me that I had to work with Tim. I’m there talking about all this policy and structural reform. How do we actually build a safer world for the future? And he instantly created visualizations of the things we were talking about. I was like, “Dear God, like that’s, that’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”
I made a note that the next opportunity I had to ask him to do something I would. Sure enough, December 2022 managed to catch him around Christmas time. He was like, “Oh, this dude, I don’t know. We’ll see.”
He came on board and was like, “All right, I’ll take a shot. I’ll take a shot.” And man, it has just been warp speed, Star Trek ever since just every day. Some amazing new thing happens for us. This has been spectacular. I’m sorry, Tim. You tell the story better than I do.
Tim: No, no, no. He’s right. It’s just, that’s the thing. I’m not the fastest artist out there. You know, I can do fully rendered work. I use advanced technology. I use everything available to me on my work. But unlike other projects I’ve worked on, this project doesn’t seem to want to die.
We did South by Southwest (SXSW). Was there and I thought, ‘Okay, we’re done. That’s it. It’ll slow down.’ Then, you know, we did the Spin Magazine, they featured us in their December physical issue. Told us, “Well, you guys won’t be in the online version, just in the print version.” Then without announcement, bloop, it just pops up in the online version. That’s what it’s been. It’s been that kind of thing that seems to be an experience in perpetual momentum.
Tim: And it’s been that kind of experience. I know so much more about hip hop that I did when I started. I’m not Walter. I’m not a scholar like that, but I have been forced to learn about the form and it has made me a better artist as a result. A dramatically better artist.
We’ll see what happens, you know. But in 2022, he called me and we put it together. First, it was like a floppy. We thought it was a 100,000 copies of this floppy distributed into the New York City School System. Then we were told it was a 150,000 copies. But we learned two weeks ago that it was 200,000 copies. Is that correct, Walter?
Walter: Yeah, that’s what Joe’s been talking about.
Tim: 200,000 copies, which is kind of frightening. But you know, hey, what you going to do, say, “Don’t put 200,000 copies of that book in those schools.” You know? So it’s in there and then we’re working on Volume 2 now.
Our partner, Christina Hungspruke LaMattina partnered with us and we decided to do this here, which is the full-on graphic novel version. So that 24 page version became a 92 page graphic novel, which of course was done, it wasn’t planned like that. I always use this joke, it will be good.
Never request a timeline from a historian
Tim: Never request a timeline from a historian. Don’t do that. It’s like, really, I didn’t know what that meant when someone told you, “Well, you, what do you mean? Don’t give them a timeline. Don’t ask them for a timeline.” They should know. No, it has nothing to do with what they know. They will go above and beyond.
The book was out, there was a lot of media. People would download it. We were on TV and everything, traveling around. We did this New York tour. It was insane. And Christina is like, “We got to do something else because they’re giving the book away,” because it was free. The DOE (Department of Education) version was free. Right? So you can download it right now.
But we wanted to start a company. So we started a company miraculously named The Graphic History Company. Seems so self-explanatory. So we did that. Yes, we did that.
I asked Walter, “Hey man, I need you to give me a timeline because I’m going to put it on the website. And I’m thinking, ‘he’ll do it by decades, you know: the 70s, 90s. It would just be a few paragraphs and I could do it.
This guy comes back a day later with 45 years worth. And I’m like, oh my God. Cause I mean, I just remember saying, “There’s no way I’m putting this on the website. This is the graphic novel. This is the expanded version.” And of course we added dates, moved stuff around. I think it starts in 1964 and it goes all the way to 2006. This is just Volume 1. We could not finish the entire history of hip hop in one volume. We’re doing 3 and it still won’t be done. But it’s as far as we going to take it.
But yeah, it changed my life. I thought when I did it, this is going to be a basic freelance job. It has utterly failed in that department. A career defining moment for me, for sure.
Book adoptions from every major city school district in the country
Walter: Yeah. We knew we had to do something big. We knew we had to do something bigger.
We knew we had to do something big because when we went to Queens and the middle schoolers stormed over the tables. They grabbed us and pulled us to the floor, demanding that we sign copies. We give them more copies. Like it was, Tim was very wise to get a hold of video from the teachers who witnessed the mass assault. It’s just been this thing where we go to DC, we go to Virginia, we go down to Louisiana. Tim was just at South by Southwest in Texas.
Everywhere we go, the energy around this book is so enormous. And that’s the thing. It’s not just in the New York City schools. We’re getting adoptions from every major city school district in the country. I was just talking with somebody in London who’s talking about adoptions over there. It’s far larger than anything we anticipated when we first started trying to put it all together.
Walter: It’s when either a school or a district looks at their student body, looks at their curriculum and says, “Oh, we need this to be part of what we teach.” And so the hundreds of thousands of copies in New York City, they’re just there on demand for everybody in the city.
Then we have folks in Richmond who have written an extraordinary lesson plan that have made it not just available for Virginia, but they’ve made it easy for teachers to teach it everywhere. And so the teachers start clamoring for it because frankly, the educational effect is unparalleled.
Students that are grade levels behind in reading all of a sudden become intensely excited readers and they catch up to grade level. The kids that are at grade level, they start jumping years ahead because they can’t stop reading.
It’s not just literally the history of hip hop. It’s the combination of the art, the music that we discuss, and then underneath all of it is the history that then they learn, they internalize, they memorize cause they literally just can’t stop reading it. It goes on to everything else that they’re trying to learn. It gives them a love of learning and reading that they didn’t have as intensely before.
Art and graphic novels by Tim Fielder
Jennifer: What about working with Tim, what about making this visual makes it more effective not just for young students who are sounds like knocking you down because they’re so excited. Like that’s amazing. But as an adult reading this book, this was fascinating for me to learn about this history and to experience it in a visual way. So I’m curious, what about that partnership was most creative? Or, what lit your spark together?
Walter: So Tim has done a couple books. Yeah. She asked me what the joy of working with you is given your amazing skills. So I’m definitely going to jump on that.
When it comes to Tim’s work and looking at either Matty’s Rocket or Infinitum, which are his books that he did, was really well known before he ever started talking with me for real.
You see in his art, this kind of vibrancy of each individual. But I love in Infinitum, the way that he took his vision of an undying main character and he turns that into this, this experience where you’re looking through the man’s eyes and you’re feeling the kind of arrogance initially. You’re feeling like the embodied intellect, the suffering that comes to be inflicted on the character. It is so visceral that when Tim is crafting work, this is what I was saying about doing portraiture of individuals, is they see things about themselves that they never saw before.
That’s this amazing gift that comes through the production of graphic art. And particularly his skill is that it taps into something that is unique to all of us and often something that we don’t appreciate until we see it reflected back. So now that that’s been for me as a historian, as a scholar who writes about forgotten people in places, to see them just recognized and just presented in a way that other people can encounter them and understand them is astonishing on its own. But then when the people themselves see the way that they’re represented and the way that the joy pours out of them. That they become so excited about what they want to say and how they want to add more to what we’ve done. There’s no better gift. Tim talks often when we go around these places about the way people respond with good will and are just thrilled to connect with us.
As much as I love doing history and can do history well in various contexts, that’s primarily his art. His art is what makes the connection that then inspires the joy and the excitement. And so I’m going to give all the credit because you know, Tim is very, very kind and then, will shy away. But he knows my stuff is full of really deep and hard things to grapple with. People can get overwhelmed by it. He is extraordinarily good about keeping the joy of the process at the center. And that’s what really makes folks most excited to do these things with us.
Making an impact in education with The Graphic History of Hip Hop
Tim: Thank you for that. I appreciate that, brother. However, now let me interject. So the very nature of a graphic history, it’s not a graphic, it’s not a history that’s told just with prose. It’s about the marriage and the dance between the written word and the picture. Right? So it really is a form that is totally unique. It’s a comic book, right? But graphic novels are longer-form comic books. And it really is a longer form where you’re telling a self-contained story as best you can where you’re trying to convey the same level and depth of written narrative by coupling it with the visual narrative.
That’s not an easy thing to do because obviously the academic thing is that, you know, you do a book, 200 people read it and that’s considered a norm. The idea of doing this book, at least for me, was about taking that very learned academic style,(…) right? Which the floppy was initially done for 11th graders.
And then the challenge when we expanded it actually broadened, as far as I’m concerned, broaden it so that it can expand to different ages and people who were much older because we began to deal with more and more and more obscure stuff in the story. So you had your Arsenio Hall, which was, oh, everybody knew Arsenio Hall. But then you have that thing where certain acts I had never heard of. But doing within a context. I forget, who was the one…What’s the one with the World Trade Center?
Walter: That’s not a group. That’s Immortal Technique. That’s Immortal Technique, a basically New York City rapper at the turn of the century and still does amazing work today.
Tim: Exactly. But the way we did that image, we had to juxtapose with the World Trade Center accident because hip hop is not some separate part of culture. It’s a part of the world of black culture. American culture. Latino culture. It’s world culture.
And so the challenge for me was taking this very real kind of real dense, almost Tom Clancy level geopolitical perspective and seeing how he intermixed it with hip hop history. My job was how do I make this stuff look good and be informational? So it’s not just dealing with it. It’s like, yes, you want the images to look good, but you also want them to serve as an infographic if you will.
That kind of blend of those things and I have to say, has absolutely made me a better artist. I know I keep repeating that. But I think it’s made the field of graphic history move for me. There are other books out there. March, you know, just goes on and on out there, Maus that are great. But I’m very proud of this book because it’s moved this form, right? Which in this time of day, you got book bans and all like things like that.
Our book has been able to somewhat survive because doesn’t even really matter your political background. Everybody listens to hip hop. It literally cuts across the board and to be involved with such a project that succeeds on an artistic level, but then it begins to potentially and progressively affect public policy.
That’s when you really getting in the grease because then it’s not just a vanity project based on entertainment. You’re influencing the way people run their school systems, the way they’re running their interactions with their educators. There’s a reason why we just were the keynote at the Minnesota Council for Social Studies thing. And it’s because beyond the fact that, you know, we’re nice guys. We’re always going to have fun. We’re going to bring the joy, bring the fun.
There’s still this context that the teachers can not only get the information, but they get information from how we present that they can take back to the classroom. And I think that, that’s what allows what Walter and I do together. I’ve done some talks before, not a lot. But the last year and a half, we’ve done a lot of these things and we’ve refined at such a point now that now we’re probably going to start bringing music, some form of that into the presentation. That’s literally where we’re at. I’m sorry, that was a droning on answer to your question.
Jennifer: I loved it, especially because what you each gained from this collaboration by working with each other was a spark that really rippled. It had like ripple effects for education systems, for students, for other educators that are seeing themselves in what you’ve done in the sense that like, “Oh, maybe I could do something like that too. Maybe I could create something that’s a little different. That’s not maybe the traditional academic monograph, but still has the potential to influence public policy and practice.”
Tim: It’s in comics or the sequential art medium has the ability to connect with people. It allows people to move into the process of reading much more easily. And this is not just for kids, it’s for adults too.
But I believe particularly due to the travels that Walter and I are engaging, and like I said there have been other graphic novels before that. But because we pretty aggressively…I would have maybe tried to like, well not really. Nah, we pretty aggressively engaged the education sector. I mean, very aggressively in terms of both the local school systems, but then on the college level. So we’re doing all of it at the same time. I know, so much more. Like I didn’t even know there was a convention system for social studies. I didn’t know that. I thought, “Well, it was just-.” But like no, they have their whole convention scene too.
I believe that we are now starting to influence other academics to take the job because they’re using what we do as a model.
Jennifer: Yes.
Tim: It’s not like some stand off thing where you have some larger than life figure. It’s just regular dudes, you know, who are out there. I mean, well, the endowed chair will never be regular. But you get my point though. We’re regular guys who are doing our work and other academics are seeing that “we can do that too.” So it’s all for them. The field of what could be told is unending.
Jennifer: What felt different about creating this book and seeing it out there, seeing it in the hands of students as opposed to your academic monographs. And I’m not saying like some books are better than others, but I’m curious how it felt in terms of that actual interaction with the readers?
Walter: Oh, it’s amazing. So you know me from my work in education and that’s different for me than it is for some other professional historians is that they go in to primarily do their research and to write their books. And teaching is secondary if not third place among their priorities. For me, the teaching is first. That’s always been it. I was teaching in P-12 systems for 17 years before I became a higher ed academic.
Jennifer: I didn’t know that.
Walter: Yeah, this is now 20 years. No, more than that. 27 years since I taught my first college class. And so this has just been a journey for me that is rooted in education. And so the connection with students, connection with families is my top priority. It’s the reason why I teach at Macalester College in St. Cloud, it’s an institution that shares those values and is committed to the education first.
And then everything else, just like in my life, flows from that foundation, that basically I teach so that I can do more research, so that I can do more service in communities around the world. And that’s the way my life is built. To then come up and find a tool like the graphic, like graphic history generally no matter what subject it covers.
But specifically The Graphic History of Hip Hop that shows the commitment that shaped who I am. I would never be who I am without hip hop. And then from there to then grow that out and have that effect spread to people in every part of the world. When we first launched this almost a year ago, we had billions of engagements. Like 3-4 billion engagements from people online looking for, “What is this? What is this content? How can we get a hold of this? How can we use it?”
That’s why we have connects in Germany, and Japan, and New Zealand, and all these other places that are pulling on what we do. This morning, some folks from Senegal were in my ear about “we need this as part of our national education curriculum.” They speak French, they want French copies. So we got to figure out, how do we reword everything in French?
It’s just amazing to me because that’s the highest priority, is that we got to do things that other educators never even attempt to. The other professors that I work with who have had the kind of success that I’ve had in college, they typically say to me routinely, “I only write for 2 other people. You know, there’s me and there’s 2 other experts that that’s who I care what they see. And then how do they understand what I’ve written?”
A big group here in St. Paul has, someone approached me yesterday and was like, “there are like 20 people who can really understand the quality of the work that I do.” And that’s pretty much the academic standard, is that you have a small group of people that you share kind of a community of knowledge.
But this is very different. My community of knowledge grew most rapidly through social media, kind of leading up to the Black Panther release and Afrofuturism. A lot of the work I did on racial violence, these things gained really global audiences. But the practice and the application of this knowledge through The Graphic History of Hip Hop is unprecedented. And so the people read it, they feel it, it moves them emotionally. None of the other books I’ve done have that same kind of impact.
Tim: I have to say that Christine and I, our other partner. First of all, you have to understand for him to say what he said. It took a long time for us to get into that point. I am so proud of him because he’s now, you know, hey, dyed in the wool academic. There’s a certain standard. You have to get your citations right. And all the big wig technical words that I don’t know what they mean. This guy was that. He is that guy.
What I am so proud of him with doing is he has found a way to maintain his integrity with that and blend it with this mass form. And I think frankly, what’s beyond the obvious that many, many, many more people are reading his stuff than almost any academic on the planet with the exception of a handful.
The thing that makes what he’s doing so important is that it’s actively affecting social change in the schools. Think about it. How many people can actually write a book where they can cite that school systems are adopting the book on multiple levels, right? We’re asked to talk about it all over the country, right? There are other countries asking us to utilize this modality. How many people, academic or no, get to have that level of effect?
Jennifer: Did you expect that kind of response when you started this project or was it more of a surprise? Either of you? No, Walter’s face is like, no!
Tim: Hell no. Hell no. I expected, I’m going to be honest with you. Like I said, initially I thought, “this will be a great freelance job. The money is good.” I’ll do it and I’ll be known as that. And that’ll be it. And it won’t take over my life.
It actually took over my life. It took over my other projects, which have not made my other editors very happy, but it really did. And I’m so glad it did because again, it’s made me a better artist.
There are different sectors of the publishing world when it deals with comics. You have the direct sales market, which is Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, but that industry is actually imploding now as we speak. It’s because the primary distributor has gone under and started to sell off the assets. So local comic book shops no longer, it’s difficult for them to get access to content. And you know how the marketplace works. The more difficult you make it for your potential customers to get access to your content, you know, that feeds itself.
But then there are these other aspects. There is the academic market. There’s the graphic novel market, which we’re in. But we braced academic and the graphic novel market. And then there’s manga. So we do graphic novels and academic. Right? So what we’ve done is allowed us to have this ability to be able to effectively surf. And I use that word, both worlds, both waves, if you will. And it, but I couldn’t have told them, “Look guys, we should publish through Ingram.” And that was the best I could do.
But after a while, it is now taking a life of its own to where The Graphic History Company is a multimedia company. It really is. It’s a multimedia company and it’s allowed me as an operator. I have interest in marketing and promotion because I talk a lot, as you can see. But what it’s done is allowed me to be able to practice muscles I never thought I would have been able to practice. Due to this book has gotten me in the Washington DC SET. I never thought that would happen, but it did. You know, it did. It’s allowed us to be approached. We’ve been in the Smithsonian. We’ve been in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And I’m listening up and thinking, yeah, that’s right. We did that. And it’s all because of this book.
Buy the book
Illustration by Tim Fielder
Jennifer: If you are watching this, it’s time to get your copy of The Graphic History of Hip Hop. And it sounds like, is the graphic novel version also like, can I buy that?
Tim: Yes.
Jennifer: Okay. I’m going to go out and get my copy of the graphic, graphic novel version too because I want to see all of the things that didn’t fit into this one. I’m really excited to see your art, Tim and Walter, to see this breadth of history that I knew nothing about to really dive into it. It’s exciting for me. And for everyone who’s watching, if you’re someone who has an idea or a dream about a book project and maybe it’s not going to look the way that your traditional academic edited collection or monograph is going to look, it sounds like this could be a real opportunity to create the change you want to see in the world. For Walter and Tim, it really sounds like it went beyond your expectations.
Walter: It’s amazing. And I do think you have the graphic novel one. Yours I think is 90 pages. Looks like the hardcover. I’d be amazed if you had the floppy because that didn’t, not many got out of New York.
Jennifer: Oh yeah, no, this is 89 [pages]. Yeah. I want the hardcover version. That’s what I’m asking about. Yeah.
Tim: So you got hardcover and softcover version, 92 pages. And you know, the hardcover can be used as a weapon in a pinch. So really something there for everyone.
Jennifer: Amazing. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we wrap up? I want to give you time for anything else you’d like to share.
Walter: Just that I love the work you do, Jennifer. And anytime we can do anything to support the work, and especially the way that you have served the academic sector has been spectacular.
I want to encourage all of my colleagues, everyone who is doing this work out here to come and visit with you because it is absolutely essential for us to build all the different kinds of careers we have based on the knowledge that we’ve acquired.
Jennifer: Thank you!
Tim, anything you’d like to share?
Tim: Yeah, presently working on Volume 2, which I hope to have some day before my hair grows back. And we’ll have that out and out to the public. And then got to work to Volume 3and hopefully some news, please Lord, I’ll be hearing very soon. I’ve been bothering Walter about why haven’t we heard anything. So if that happens the way I want, it’ll be really interesting, but I’m not going to jinx it.
Jennifer: Fingers crossed.
I wish you both all the best with your collaborations and your own initiatives in the future. This has been such an interesting conversation for me. I can’t wait to share it with people.
I hope they all go out and get The Graphic History of Hip Hop because this is, wow. I mean, it’s just so colorful and engaging and memorable. I think that even if you’re not someone who identifies as a graphic novel reader, maybe you don’t read comics that are in other things, this can still really be engaging. And it was surprising for me to see how into it I got knowing very little about hip hop. Thank you so much for coming on The Social Academic.
Illmatic Consequences: The Clapback to Opponents of Critical Race Theory—edited by Dr. Walter Greason and Danian Darrell Jerry has been honored with the 2025 Anna Julia Cooper and C. L. R. James Prize for Outstanding Research in Africana Studies at the National Council for Black Studies (NCBS) Conference.
Bios
Walter Greason
Dr. Walter Greason, Ph.D., DeWitt Wallace Professor in the Department of History at Macalester College is the preeminent historian of Afrofuturism, the Black Speculative Arts, and digital economies in the world today. Named one of “Today’s Black History Makers” by The Philadelphia Daily News, Dr. Greason has written more than one hundred academic articles and essays. His work has appeared on Huffington Post, National Public Radio, and The Atlantic among other popular, professional and scholarly journals. He is also the author, editor, and contributor to eighteen books, including Suburban Erasure, The Land Speaks, Cities Imagined, Illmatic Consequences, and The Black Reparations Project.
From 2007 – 2012, Dr. Greason was an advisor to Building One America, the coalition that designed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (2009). He also served as the Founding President of the T. Thomas Fortune Foundation, an organization that saved the National Historic Landmark dedicated to the leading, militant journalist of the nineteenth century. Dr. Greason’s digital humanities projects, “The Wakanda Syllabus” and “The Racial Violence Syllabus”, produced global responses in the last six years. His work in historic preservation and virtual reality continues to inspire new research around the world. Dr. Greason currently writes about the racial wealth gap and the patterns of economic globalization.
Dr. Greason is currently serving as a special consultant to the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
@WalterDGreason
Tim Fielder
Tim Fielder is an Illustrator, concept designer, cartoonist, and animator born in Tupelo, Mississippi, and raised in Clarksdale, Mississippi. He has a lifelong love of Visual Afrofuturism, Pulp entertainment, and action films. He holds other Afrofuturists such as Samuel R. Delany, Octavia Butler, Pedro Bell, and Overton Loyd as major influences. He is the creator of the graphic novels INFINITUM: An Afrofuturist Tale, published by HarperCollins Amistad in 2021, and the Glyph Award-winning ‘Matty’s Rocket.’ Fielder is also known for participating in the Carnegie Hall Afrofuturism Festival exhibit ‘Black Metropolis’ and The Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History and Culture exhibit ‘AFROFUTURISM: A History of Black Futures’.
Do you need an online presence yesterday? You may be wondering how can I improve my online presence as a professor, researcher, or scientist quick.
“I have a big talk coming up, it would be great tohave my website up by then.”
“My tenure review packet is due next month. Any chance we could have the website up?”
“The book comes out in X month, my publisher needs my bio soon.”
“It would be great to have this done before our grant proposal is submitted.”
You may want to be intentional about your online presence if you need it for a
Conference, talk, or event
Book
Job search
Funding application or annual review
Award
Application
Press release
Board meeting
I’m not always able to help academics who come to me with a short turnaround. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways for you to have a stronger online presence now. You have agency in how you show up online.
What should I do 1st?
Google yourself. What’s can people find about you and your research now? What makes up your digital footprint?
Gather what they need from you. We’re you asked for specific materials such as your bio, headshot, or social media handle? If yes, these may be items to consider improving. This is more for an event, media appearance, or announcement.
Here’s advice for writing your LinkedIn headline specifically.
Need new photos of you? It’s okay to ask for support. For instance, can your university provide a professional photographer for the event? If not, can they recommend someone local? You can seek approval for use of funds towards that or other things for your online presence. If you’re doing a media appearance or event, it’s okay to ask your host if there will be photos or video.
You can also ask a friend or family member to take photos of you. While selfie are a good option, a phone-camera savvy friend is ideal.
I did my 1st professional photo shoot this year. It was much more comfortable than I expected because I had a great team there to help me. You can hear all about it in an upcoming interview for The Social Academic with the photographer and makeup artist I’ll be recommending to my clients. I can’t wait to share our conversation with you. I’ll update this article when that interview goes live, so bookmark it if you’d find it useful.
If you have access to make updates yourself, your faculty profile is a great way to improve your online presence. For most academics, it can be a slow process to request an update be made. If you’re unsure how to make changes to your faculty profile, now is a great time to ask.
If you need your website today,Owlstown is a great option for you.
If you don’t want a website, but you still want something for people to view online, consider a Google Doc, Word Doc view only, PDF or other media with a public share link. If you need something more visual, consider a Canva presentation.
Need a social media graphic? Canva is my favorite option. I’ve helps professors around the world feel comfortable using Canva for their social media. I even went to Cava Create last year in Los Angeles. This year’s event is coming up on April 10.
Social media graphic ideas:
Introduce yourself
Share your research
Meet your team
Share a paper or publication
Talk or event info
Invite people to your course (okay this one isn’t as timely, but still a fun idea, I had to share it with you)
You don’t need to work with me to have a stronger online presence now. Find resources on The Social Academic blog (try searching by category). There are interviews you may find helpful on the podcast and on YouTube. You’ve got this! ✨
Work with me on your online presence
You don’t have to do it alone. I’m Jennifer van Alstyne. I help individual professors, research labs and groups communicate who you are and what you care about online. You can have your website designed for you. You can have set-up of their LinkedIn profile done for you. You don’t have to write your own bio (unless you want to). It’s okay to get support for your digital presence as a faculty or researcher.
Professors with a tight turnaround typically book a private 1-on-1 consultation with me on Zoom. That way we can work together in real time to make a difference for your online presence. Academics like having an expert to ask their questions. Most save significant time with ideas that just won’t work for their goals and needs. I’m happy to help you on a private consultation too.
But if your schedule is a bit more flexible, let’s meet on a no pressure Zoom call about working together so we can customize a service that fit your lifestyle, needs, and goals. Find a time on this online calendar.
While I can’t promise I’m able to work with you when it comes to a quick turnaround, I promise to help you in the right direction (even when it isn’t working with me).
Jennifer van Alstyne and Dr. Sheena Howard designed this live interactive virtual event for professors and researchers like you. Especially if you’ve ever felt like, “I don’t need to do this for me, but I should do this for my book” when it comes to your online presence. Or, if you worry about self-promotion but know your writing / research can help more people if you’re open to sharing it.
Join Dr. Sheena C. Howard and Jennifer van Alstyne for a90-minute virtual event to help academics and researchers amplify your work, attract media opportunities, and share your book in meaningful ways.
We hope you can join us on April 12, 2025 for Promoting Your Book Online for Academics. You’re invited! 💌
What: 1.5 hour interactive workshop When: April 12, 2025 at 11:30am Pacific Time / 2:30pm Eastern Time Where: Live on Zoom (there will be a replay) With: Jennifer van Alstyne and Dr. Sheena Howard
A workshop for academics who have a book or research project you should be sharing with the world ✨
April 12, 2025 on Zoom at 11:30am Pacific Time / 2:30pm Eastern Time. Sign up.
About the workshop
Promoting Your Book Online for Academics is on April 12, 2025 at 2pm Eastern / 11:30am Pacific Time. It will be recorded for when you can’t make it live.
You should sign up if you’re open to
Sharing your book (or your research project)
Opportunities for your book to be featured in media (but aren’t sure where to start)
Helping more people with the writing / research you already do
Aim to attract funding
Want to build partnerships or collaborations for your equity focused work
At the end of this workshop you’ll know what’s effective use of your time for media and online presence.
What’s included?
Our live interactive workshop is on April 12, 2025 on Zoom (1.5 hours)
Replay of the event (video and audio only if you prefer to listen)
Worksheet to help you take action and Resources guide to keep
A private scheduling link for your follow up consultation with Jennifer
What inspired this event
Hi, I’m Jennifer van Alstyne (@HigherEdPR). I’ve been working 1-on-1 with professors on their online presence since 2018. When I look back on the transformations my clients have gone through, there’s often an emotional journey, not just the capacity-building work we do for your online presence. Most of my clients are authors. The professor writers I work with want their words to reach the right people, but felt unsure about how to go about that online.
Your book deserves to reach the people you wrote it for. When I ask professors who haven’t promoted their book, “do you hope more readers find this book?” The answer is often “Yes,” even if the book is older. Even when the book didn’t sell as well as you may have hoped. Even when your book is out of print there are things you can do to have agency in sharing it online.
In 2021, Dr. Sheena Howard and I teamed up for an intimate live event that helped academics around the world. We’ve been wanting to do another one since. But we wanted something that was really going to help you. For years, authors have opened up to each of us about what stopped them from sharing their book for years. When we were brainstorming who we want to help most with this Promoting Your Book Online for Academics event, these are some of the stories that came up:
I thought I’d have more support in marketing my book from the press…but it seems to be mostly on me.
My publisher asked me to build up my social media presence for my new book…I’m not really a social media person.
My books in the past didn’t do well…I’m worried my new book won’t do well either.
I shared my book once. But I haven’t share it again since on socials.
I am unsure if it is too early (or too late) to promote my book.
If I want to promote my book, when should I be reaching out to media? Before the book launches? After the book launches? I don’t know where to start.
I don’t think anyone will care about my book.
I want to go on podcasts to talk about my book, but I haven’t done anything toward that, no.
Dr. Sheena C. Howard (@drsheenahoward), a Professor of Communication. She helps professors get media coverage and visibility through Power Your Research (without the expense of a publicist). She’s been featured in ABC, PBS, BBC, NPR, NBC, The LA Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and more for her research on representation, identity, and social justice. Her book, Black Comics: Politics of Race and Representation won an Eisner Award. The Encyclopedia of Black Comics, which profiles over 100 Black people in the comics industry. Her book, Why Wakanda Matters, was a clue on Jeopardy.
She’s a writer without limits. I’ve recommended Sheena to some of my clients because she’s someone who helps people move past the limits we sometimes set for ourselves as writers. The worries or beliefs that sometimes hold us back. She’s worked closely with writers and creatives to build their capacity, to have agency in your media presence so you can make an impact when it matters. You want visibility that makes a difference for you. That invites readers. That can attract opportunities when they’re aligned with with what you want for yourself and the world.
This event is for you even when you want to do it yourself for your online presence. You won’t have to work with us after the workshop ends. This live event is about implementable strategies, and finding focus for what makes sense for sharing your book or research project.
FAQs for Promoting Your Book Online for Academics
Frequently asked questions you may be wondering about.
Where is the workshop?
This is a live virtual interactive event on Zoom on April 12, 2025 at 11:30am Pacific Time / 2:30pm Eastern Time.
What if I can’t make it live?
At our last event, some people knew they wouldn’t be able to attend live when they signed up. A couple people also couldn’t make it live unexpectedly. If you’re unable to join us live on April 12, 2025, you’ll have everything you need.
Jennifer will email you the event replay when it’s finished processing. You’ll get a copy of the take home worksheet to help you take action and the resources guide. That email will also have your private scheduling link for a follow up meeting with Jennifer if you’d find space to chat about your online presence supportive.
Outside of the United States? We had people register from around the world last time. If you run into an issue checking out, Jennifer is happy to create an invoice for you through Wise. Email [email protected]
This event is non-refundable. If something comes up and you’re unable to join us live on April 12, 2025, you’ll have everything you need.
Jennifer will email you the event replay when it’s finished processing. You’ll get a copy of the take home worksheet to help you take action and the resources guide. That email will also have your private scheduling link for a follow up meeting with Jennifer if you’d find space to chat about your online presence supportive.
Can I use professional development funds or research funds to pay for this event?
Yes. If a custom invoice would be helpful for you, please reach out to [email protected]
I’m interested in working with Jennifer and Sheena privately. Is this event still for me?
Jennifer and Sheena team up for online presence VIP Days. And some of our clients have worked with us separately depending on your goals.
While I’m happy to see how we can work together, this is not a sales event. At our last event, people found having a bit of private space after the event was helpful. So we wanted to be sure you get that private follow up consultation too. If you’re interested in working with us, please do sign up for that Zoom call. We can save time to chat about what may be helpful for you.
This workshop isn’t in my budget…I still want a stronger online presence for my book / research.
Yay, I’m glad you found this page because I want that for you. You deserve a stronger online presence if that’s something you want for yourself. Best wishes for your online presence, you’ve got this! There are free resources here on The Social Academic blog to help you have a stronger online presence for your book and your research. You can search by category to find what’s helpful for you. You might start resources related to Authors and Books.
I don’t think this event is right for me, can I share it with a friend?
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This article isn’t about which is better for you: faculty profile or LinkedIn profile. It would be great for your online presence if you had both. Hi, I’m Jennifer van Alstyne. I help Higher Education faculty, researchers, and scientists with their digital presence for academics.
I just got off a call with an Associate Professor client. We worked on both his LinkedIn profile and faculty profile together (which just went live, yay!). This professor is really an in-person networker. When we 1st met he said, “people know me,” but if you searched online? At the time there wasn’t a comprehensive academic profile or online presence that could help people know who he is now.
Are you “not really a social media person” too? I’ve written about how I still recommend having a filled out LinkedIn profile if you’re an academic who “doesn’t want to be on social media.” It’s okay to not post on social media. It’s okay to lurk. It’s okay to like or repost without sharing original posts yourself. There are many ways to be on social media as an academic. And what feels right for you now may change in the future too. While I love personal academic websites as a long-term solution for professors, researchers, and scientists, having a website isn’t right for everyone.
However you choose to have an online presence (if that’s a goal for you at all) is fine. There isn’t a one size fits all solution for academics and researchers online.
As an academic who wants to have a stronger online presence, it’s a best practice to update your faculty profile and your LinkedIn profile at least 1/year.
Faculty Profile
A few years ago I asked a professor client to reach out to his college to ask if they had specific guidelines for their faculty profiles. We were redoing his academic bio. His done for you bio writing package included a new faculty profile. When we got on our call to chat about it, he started laughing, because when the college replied to him, they’d sent back his own faculty profile as “a great example.” 🤣
You can have a “great example” of a faculty profile, and still feel like it doesn’t reflect who you are and what you value as an academic now.
We grinned because the profile we envisioned for him was such an improvement. I say that not to disregard or belittle the work he’d done on his own faculty profile. Like most professors, he’d only ever written his own bios. But the time we created to talk through who he is, his story, and the change he’s working to create in the world? It made such an impact for the words we ultimately chose to share.
Your faculty profile is the 1st place for many of your students, colleagues, and people in your field will go to learn more about you. Some faculty profiles are robust with space for things like your bio, teaching, research, awards, and university media mentions. Others are streamlined with the details people most need like your job title and department and recent publications. Most professors I’ve chatted with express a lack of enthusiasm for their faculty profile, “it’s there, but it isn’t exciting.” And that’s fine, your professor or researcher profile on your university’s website doesn’t have to be enhanced unless you want it to be.
Problems faculty have run into updating their faculty profiles
I really like the mix of having both your faculty profile and your LinkedIn profile because professors who come to me with help for their online presence have occasionally reached out in distress:
“No one knew who to ask. I don’t think any of my colleagues have updated their faculty profile in years.”
“The person in our department who knew how to update the faculty profiles left, no one’s been able to update their profile in over a year.”
“My university moved all our faculty profiles to an intranet…that was my whole online presence.”
“They said they’re updating the faculty profile system. There won’t be an option to update my faculty profile for months.”
“The IT people said no emails on faculty profiles, so they’re gone. How are people supposed to get in touch with me?”
That last one had me on high alert. When I ask professors, “How do people usually get in touch with you?” They typically say something like, “People look up my faculty profile, my emails right there.”
Some universities have removed email addresses from faculty profiles in hopes of limiting phishing emails. A few have eliminated faculty profiles altogether. I get that there are IT limitations and protection needs that sometimes force these decisions. But I also deeply mourn the loss of connection that happened to each of those faculty members overnight. What things were lost? What connection?
It’s the same way I feel about adjunct professors, lecturers, and staff who make such an impact on campus, but often aren’t given space on their university website beyond their listed name.
You deserve a space online if you want one.
You can choose to have a stronger online presence if you want one.
You have agency in how you show up online.
Updating your faculty profile
The most frequent audience for your faculty profile is your students, colleagues, and people at your university. But those aren’t the only people who may visit your faculty profile. These are steps you can take to improve your faculty or researcher profile on your university’s website.
When you Google your name, does your faculty profile show up? Tip: Use a private or incognito browser mode for results not personalized to you.
Visit your faculty profile. What types of information are available? Does anything feel like it’s missing?
Make list of what needs to be updated. For instance, are the keywords for your research out of date? Do your recent publications appear there, or is that section a few years old? What about your bio? Does it still reflect who you are now? Many professors have only filled out a portion of their faculty profile, leaving unused sections blank. This is a good opportunity to improve your online presence by thinking about which section may be helpful at add in. What might help your students or other researchers in your field long-term? You don’t have to do the work to make these changes now. Making a list of the updates you want will help you prioritize your time later.
Find out who to contact about implementing your updates. You might do this before actually writing the updates in case you get word that “the system is changing” or “we’ll have a new format for faculty profiles soon.” I don’t want to you to makeover your faculty profile and then not be able to implement those changes. If you have the ability to make changes to your faculty profile yourself, skip this step.
Add a time to your calendar to gather materials, writing, or any update you want to have on your faculty profile. Block more time on your calendar than you anticipate just in case.
Good luck with updating your faculty profile! If you can only focus on 1 thing to improve, choose your academic bio. Your bio is a living document that can adapt to fit your needs. I had a great conversation with Dr. Echo Rivera where I share my top tips for your academic bio. I hope you find it helpful.
Don’t want to write your own academic bio?
There are many ways to have a stronger online presence as a professor or researcher. You don’t need to work with me to be more intentional about how you show up online as an academic. Not sure where you should start? Join my free online presence course to help you know where to focus your time and energy.
I’m happy to help you if you want a done for you academic bio too. It’s hard to be introspective about yourself. It may feel “uncomfortable” or like it’s time “too focused on me.” It’s okay if your brain wants to focus on other things instead of writing a new bio for yourself. That’s okay!
When we work together on done for you bio writing, you’ll get general use bios at different word lengths so you always have something ready to go. It also includes a custom bio like your new faculty profile done for you so you have a document ready to send to the person who implements changes at your university. If you want a “template” easy for you to update and adapt to their academic life for years to come, let’s chat about working together.
LinkedIn Profile
I like LinkedIn profiles for academics because they have many more capabilities than your faculty profile. You’re not job searching. You may be wondering, “does LinkedIn still make sense for me?” Let’s find out.
LinkedIn is great for faculty and researchers to…
Which of these benefits of having a LinkedIn presence as an academic stand out to you?
help people get in touch with you
show up in internet search results with a profile you control
share who they are and what they care about (in more engaging format than your CV)
connect with people in your research / teaching field
connect with your alma maters
be in network with your past affiliations
reconnect with former colleagues
find the people you’re looking for (LinkedIn has advanced search features)
connect with people across research fields and disciplines
connect with people in other regions around the world
invite deeper engagement with your research
help your research find an audience that cares
connect with editors and people in publishing
reach people who your research helps most
engage with the public
reach policymakers and practitioners
meet potential collaborators and partners
meet with potential community partners
meet potential corporate partners
attract potential research funders
be open to media requests and engagement
invite aligned opportunities for yourself and your students
help your students have a larger network
share a short recommendation for your student
connect with your alumni and former mentees with ease
reshare posts your audience may find useful
have conversations that invite people to participate (like in the comments of a post)
have conversations privately, via messages or groups
share media related to your Experiences and Education
show a bit more of your story than faculty profiles typically allow
start a newsletter
publish articles
Whoa, that list got longer than I expected. That was just a short brainstorm session too.
Did 1 or more of those feel like a good reason for you to be more intentional about your LinkedIn presence as an academic?
P.S. If you’re finding this article helpful, save it to your bookmarks for later. Please share it as a resource if you think a friend or colleague would find it helpful.
Here are 3 ways to get your LinkedIn profile if you want to do-it-yourself
In workshops for grad students and faculty, I’ve recommended blocking your calendar, to set time aside in your agenda for your LinkedIn profile. I’m someone who likes deep focused work, so that big chunk of time is often the best way for me to focus. How about you?
Here are 3 other possibilities to explore when it comes to fitting your LinkedIn profile into your academic life:
Do it section-by-section. When I 1st release my LinkedIn Profile for Professors and Researchers course, it was a challenge. Each week a new lesson was released helping you update just 1 section of your LinkedIn profile. Breaking your LinkedIn profile into smaller chunks let’s to create transformation for your online presence in a schedule that works for your life. Don’t feel like you need to change everything all at once. Any small change or improvement you make can help people better connect with your online presence as an academic.
Set a time to co-work on your LinkedIn profile. Are you someone that likes co-working? Get some friends, colleagues, or even your students together for a LinkedIn co-working session. You can each update your profiles, and even organize a quick review of each other’s at the end to check for typos. This can be virtual or in person, whatever you prefer.
Create intentional space for your lab, department, or school. Even though this is more work, you may have better motivation or more positive feelings about the time you take for your LinkedIn profile if you’re helping other people. You don’t need me to come in for a workshop at your university to create a professional development opportunity for LinkedIn you can all benefit from.
It’s okay if none of these work for you. If you’re someone who’s been wanting to do it yourself and you just haven’t? It’s okay to get support. Each of my professor clients who’ve chosen a done for you LinkedIn profile had the capability to do it themselves. Some even took my LinkedIn Profile course and found “I just can’t make the time,” and “I just want it done for me.” You can have a stronger online presence through LinkedIn, and we can totally work together on this.
For those of you wanting to DIY your LinkedIn profile as an academic, I hope these tips for your LinkedIn profile help you:
Don’t have the time for your LinkedIn profile?
Need to prioritize other things in your academic life? I totally understand. First, it’s totally okay if LinkedIn isn’t a goal for you right now. You don’t need a stronger online presence unless you want one.
Find free resources to help you on The Social Academic blog, podcast, and YouTube channel. You’ve got this (whenever you’re ready)! 🌟
My professor clients can do their own LinkedIn profile, for sure. They just don’t have the time. They’re not job searching. They want a stronger online presence. They’re busy academics who want to feel better connected with people in their field and reach people their research/teaching/leadership supports. They need to focus on their academic priorities and their personal ones, like their family.
You don’t have to do it yourself if you don’t want to. I’ll build your academic LinkedIn profile for you on your VIP Day. We’ll have a planning meeting to talk about your CV, review your existing profile, and chat about your goals. Then, on your VIP Day your LinkedIn profile will be fully done-for-you. After, we’ll meet on Zoom for your Review and Training Meeting, make any needed changes in real time. We’ll build your capacity and practice using LinkedIn for your specific needs. What works for one professor may not be a good fit for you, so we’ll talk about solutions personalized for your life/goals.
Who do I typically work with on the LinkedIn VIP Days service? You may want a done-for-you profile if you just don’t have the time to do it yourself (or you don’t want to). My LinkedIn profile clients have been
Mid career academics
Senior academics
Higher Ed administrators
Principal Investigators (PIs)
Early career researchers, we may create a greater impact for your academic life by partnering on done for you bio writing instead. Not that I wouldn’t be happy to do your LinkedIn profile for you. Just know that you don’t need to work with me for a great LinkedIn profile. I promise you can do this yourself if you want to.
If you’re like, “actually I don’t got this.” Or, “I know I’m not gonna do this on my own.” That’s okay. I’m Jennifer van Alstyne. I’ve been helping professors feel confident when showing up online since 2018 through personal websites and social media. I’m here to help you too.
Let’s chat on a no pressure Zoom call about your LinkedIn VIP Day for a done-for-you profile. Or, a 1 hour LinkedIn consultation with me. Schedule a time on my online calendar.
Ideas for Your Online Presence Before, During, and After Your Talk or Presentation
The best time to share about your upcoming talk or presentation is before it happens. Some people find that their most engaged post on social media is announcing that you’ve submitted your abstract to speak (or your publication). People are excited by the possibility and what you care about. Telling your story of your upcoming speaking engagement is a great way to do that.
Sharing on social media can start early, but I don’t want you to think it’s the only way to help your online presence and the people coming to your talk. You’re going to explore many ideas today, but you don’t have to try all of them. I hope that there’s at least one idea that resonates with you and you’d feel comfortable trying it yourself.
Before your speaking engagement
When you submit an abstract for or are invited to speak
Add your website URL and social media handle to your bio. This will help people find you before, during, and after your presentation.
I’ve just submitted an abstract to speak at…
Announce that you’ve submitted – If you’ve been invited to speak, a good time to share on social media is when you’ve agreed or committed to that engagement. It’s great to add your social media handle and a link to your personal academic website if you have one, along with your bio. You might add that information to your CV.
Connect with people before you go
Once your talk is confirmed, you can add it to your website and you might take time to connect with your fellow panelists or event organizers before the event.
Conference Hashtag
If there is one, you can check out the conference hashtag and make plans with people who will also be at the event that you want to see, especially if you live in different cities or countries.
Business cards
If you have a business card, add your social media handle and website there is a good idea.
Share your talk on social media
When you’re sharing your talk on social media, people need more information than you expect. They need to know what your talk is about, when your talk is to know if they can attend, what the event is, and any link where they can learn more information. This is something you can share on any social media platform or across all your platforms.
Some professors hesitate to share their upcoming talk on Facebook where they may have a more personal audience, but these people are excited by what you care about when it comes to your research and how you choose to spend your energy. You might include , on all social media posts, any definition or story that helps people better understand why this talk or research matters to you.
Tag people or organizations that are related to your talk or event.
The conference hashtag can be added to your post about your talk but you can also add a hashtag that relates to the topic of what you are presenting on.
You can share the post about your talk before, during or after the event.
Create a graphic or infographic
If you create a graphic or share an image to go with your talk, a great resource is Writing image Descriptions on Accessible Social – which helps you create social media posts accessible for people with disabilities.
These are ideas are for your online presence and networking while a conference or event is happening.
Check out the conference hashtag, again
If you checked out the event hashtag, you might find that people weren’t using it. Once the event starts, you can start using the conference hashtag and check it out! See if there is a conversation you want to be part of, or an event you want to check out.
Be open about your online presence
The best thing you can do for your online presence while at an in person event, is to be open that you have a website or that you’re on social media.
Help people find and connect with you
You can make this easier for people by making a QR code that helps people go to your website, have this info on a business card, create a hand out with information or resource about your talk (that includes people need to your online presence) , or use an end slide in your presentation to help people connect with you after the event is over.
Resources to take home and share
When you create a resource like a handout or links /slides to share, that can go on your personal academic website. They can also be shared on social media using that conference hashtag to help people find this resource that you’ve already taken the time to gather.
Will this be recorded?
Ask if there is going to be a recording. Sometimes, there isn’t an official recording but you can ask if you can record yourself.
Stay connected once you’re gone
Connect with people you meet or you like and admire on social media, while at the conference. Helps others be more likely to learn about you.
It’s okay if you don’t do any of that too
I have never had time for any of that at conferences, personally. In person events can be overwhelming for me as an introvert. Because of that, I don’t have the brain capacity to remember things like take a photo, much less record some videos.
Anything I just talked about – some of those things can be prepped in advance others you don’t have to do live (you can do afterward)
Next are ideas you can do after your presentation or talk is over.
After your talk is over
Record your talk
Whether there was a recording of your talk or not, you could always record your talk and slides using zoom, then post the video to your website or social media. There are options to share the full version of your talk, if you like to. You can just share the title slide, or full text version of the talk, or even the full slides.
Connect with people when you’re back at home
If you didn’t connect with people during the event, sometimes connecting AFTER the event is easier. You can look at the conference hashtag. Look through the business cards you collected. See the conference program and look at the bios to see who is on social media.
Create and/or share resources
If you didn’t have resources to share at your talk, if there are things you want people to know after the fact, you can create a graphic or handout that is shareable on social media or a page on your website.
Celebrate other people
While you can post about your own talk, you can also post about your panel and thank the conference and event organizers. If you want to participate in the conference community but not want to talk about your own talk, you can celebrate others instead. It’s a great opportunity for PIs to celebrate their lab members or grad students who are at the event. There are so many ways to celebrate people instead of yourself, if that feels comfortable or more exciting for you.
These don’t have to be professional shots. A messy desk shot or photo of you working on your slides or going over your notes on the plane. Something that feels quick or easy to you.
Take pictures during the event
Snap a photo of things you see, people you meet, friends you catch up with. Ask someone to take photos of you while you’re speaking or pose at the conference.
You could record a video of your talk
This can be before, during, or after the event.
You can record a video about your talk
Record a short video introducing your talk and the main takeaways. This video is especially for people who couldn’t be there live for your presentation.
Record some b-roll
If you like video, record b-roll video. Take a sip of coffee, getting ready to speak, short travel clips, video of fellow panelists or friends. These might be put into a longer video or Instagram reel.
But these might feel like too much – so even though they are fun ideas, don’t be stressed if you do none of them.
