Listen. Subscribe and review! “To boldly go to where no man has gone before” — the classic Star Trek slogan reflects how colonialism informs space exploration. NASA’s technologies are the same used for American imperialist ventures today. Even space rocks in museums are procured because of British colonialism. Planetary scientist Divya Persaud and STS scholar…
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S5E12 | COVID-19 Care-Work for Academic Families & Singles with Professor Charissa Cheah
Listen. Subscribe! Some of us have additional care responsibilities at home. Some of us are all alone at home. How do we care for ourselves and each other during lockdown? In this second part of our interview, Professor Charissa Cheah draws upon her expertise in psychology to talk about managing child care and the paradoxes…
S5E11 | Cells and Society at Work: Biomedical & Biopolitical Takes on Immunity
Listen. Subscribe! Why do we talk about our immune systems using the language of warfare? Let’s discuss immunity from two perspectives that may seem very different: biomedical engineering and biopolitics. In this episode PhDivas Liz and Xine educate each other about their disciplinary knowledge of what “immunity” means. Cells at Work! is a recent anime…
S5E10 | COVID-19 Anti-Asian & Anti-Black Racism with Professor Charissa Cheah
Listen. Rate, review, subscribe! Who is seen as the disease or the diseased? Psychologist Charissa Cheah received RAPID grant funding from the National Science Foundation to study the forms of anti-Chinese racism from COVID-19 and their impact on Chinese-American individuals, families, and communities. PhDivas Liz and Xine discuss with Professor Cheah the politics and histories…
S5E9 | The Migrant Precariat & the Scientific Method: Dr. Furaha Asani Against the Academic Pedestal
Listen. Subscribe! Support us here. Even scientists face deportation in an anti-immigration environment. But Dr. Furaha Asani cautions that academics shouldn’t think of themselves as “one of the good ones.” Biochemist Dr. Asani is now one of the migrant precariat because her visa was denied for questionable reasons. PhDiva Xine Yao interviews Dr. Asani about…
S5E8 | Let’s Talk about #COVID19- Dr. Kishana Taylor
Listen. Subscribe! Support us here. Do you have questions about #COVID19? Or even basic questions about viruses in general? Dr. Kishana Taylor is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of California, Davis. She studies the rate of reassortment between influenza viruses during co-infection.Listen as Dr. Taylor breaks down how viruses are named, with #COVID19 is so bad and…
S5E7 | Doing Science on her Own Terms- Conversation with Dr. Laura Boykin
Listen. Subscribe! Support us here. PhDivas Podcast interviews Computational Biologist Dr. Laura Boykin. We talk about Tree Lab, the project bringing sequencing capabilities to farmers in Uganda. Also mentioned, being nervous before a TED Talk, doing science on her own terms, and dancing. You can follow Dr. Boykin on twitter @Laura_boykin and learn about Tree Lab…
S5E6 | Black Feminism in Britain: Jade Bentil &Paulette Williams
Listen. Subscribe! Support us here. There are currently fewer than 30 Black women full professors in the UK…in any discipline. If you know Angela Davis and Kimberle Crenshaw, do you also know about Gail Lewis and Olive Morris? PhDiva Xine interviews Jade Bentil, a historian of Black British women’s activism, and Paulette Williams, who heads…
S5E5 | On Asking for Help & Valuing Our Work; Launching a Patreon!
How do we evaluate the value of our work? PhDivas is finally launching a Patreon in order to sustain this project. Liz and Xine decided to sit down and record why it has taken them so long to put this together. (Awkwardness!) Sometimes we are so used to giving free labour to our institutions and…
S4E4 | ON STRIKE! Collective Action for a Better University
Listen. Subscribe! Review! Job security, unequal pay, excessive workloads, gender and racial inequality: this is the state of academia everywhere. How do we push for change when institutions don’t want to? In the UK the University and College Union is on STRIKE to fight for the soul of the university and that means PhDiva Xine…
