Let’s Talk: Getting Published

To begin this first blog I would like to say a few things about who I am, why I write these posts and who I hope they will reach and find a response from. I am a humanities scholar writing for and looking forward to hearing from, anyone who is involved in considering the present shape and the future of humanities scholarship. And also in considering what our respective and collective places in this present and future may be.

I have taken advantage of the unique nature of the internet to look for a collegial space we can all come to in our own time. My memory of the final stage of my doctoral research is a blur of classes, supervisions, library visits and – yes : ) – grocery shopping. From what I could see of more senior academics around me, life only gets busier after this. But yet to listen, to find a voice with which to contribute: these surely are the quiet staples of the path we have chosen to follow. Without them our work risks becoming a round of task completion alone, I think?

In practical terms the need to publish seems to me the most pressing issue for scholars who, like me, have recently completed their doctoral work. In both the United Kingdom where I lived and worked for more than a decade and in India where I presently live, an academic gains in credibility through getting their work published. Putting together at least a basic publishing plan and considering relevant points such as: identifying scholarly journals and possible monograph publishers, ways of approaching them and factoring in the time it will take from the acceptance of a proposal to the final publication (fingers crossed : )) is practical research activity that is just as important as the work it takes to develop and write your doctoral thesis.  

Of course it’s not just how to publish that’s a practical issue. The “why” is just as important.  My own answer to this is a simple one: to be engaged and to engage.  Dialogue and human contact are what make being a learner and a teacher worthwhile. How else can we make sure that the humanities remain fresh, alive and …well, human?