Social media and web 2.0 have presented exciting new possibilities for sharing research with the world. While our research in the academy is often confined to discipline specific conferences and academic journals, stuck behind paywalls and accessible only to others in the academic community, self publishing our work on blogs, twitter, facebook, or other platforms allows researchers to communicate their work to a broad audience.

This trend is exciting. As you can see on this blog, I can, with no intermediary, share in plain language, why I think my research is important. People can access my work from around the world, and we can engage in debate or take research in new directions. Furthermore, it’s in the interests of society as a whole. As an academic, my work is at least in part funded by tax dollars. Thus it can be argued that I have an obligation to make my work available and accessible to the public who helps to fund my work.

With these social and scholarly benefits, it’s no wonder that many are advocating that all academics turn to social media platforms to share their research. Unfortunately, however, the question of whether or not to discuss your work in public online is neither simple nor straightforward for many women and people from marginalized populations – particularly those who work in critical gender and race studies, game studies and STEM.

Continue reading “Access Denied? Public Scholarship and the peril of being a woman” →