Website with academic profiles: Peerologie
Today I have invited Shadi to share her project, Peerologie, with us. Shadi is a third year Clinical Psychology PhD student, concurrently pursuing a Master’s in Public Health at the SDSU/UCSD Joint Doctoral Program. Her research interests are the interface of behavioral medicine and social psychology and include dyadic concordance among patients with chronic illnesses and their romantic partners and body image in rare and disfiguring chronic illnesses. Shadi also holds degrees from Stanford University and the London School of Economics and has a professional background in business development and social marketing.
There once was a curious graduate student……mesmerized by a flight of interdisciplinary project ideas, but without a central space to focus and begin her queries. She was interested in exploring interfaces between cognitive science and economics, clinical psychology and law, management science and feminist studies, biomotion and linguistics…but the beautiful chaos and limitlessness that initially drew her to these areas would start to feel overwhelming without at least a starting point to begin the exploration…
…that graduate student was me. Until recently, my (very) varied interests seemed like a dirty academic secret; true scholars are supposed to have CVs where the lists of publications serve as elegant, systemic entryways into understanding the academics’ career paths and research interests. The story that the list weaves should be clean; it should be linear and should make sense.
But, as those of us with interdisciplinarity running through our veins know all too well, the story may not be so neat. It was this love of varied subject areas in gloriously, brazenly disparate disciplines that spurred the development of Peerologie.
Peerologie provides a snapshot of emerging areas of study through the lens of academics in their respective fields and allows a glimpse into what creative pieces move the academic in life. Each expert is simply asked to provide the following:
- A quick blurb on what the academic is most passionate about at the moment (this can be in the form of a short bio or several keywords)
- Three seminal pieces that the academic would recommend reading in beginning the research journey in this area (authored by the academic or others)
- A piece of writing/novel/poem/essay/short story (anything) that the academic simply finds beautiful or inspirational (Why? Because I would love to know what Žižek’s favorite poem is…wouldn’t you?)
If you know a professor or other scholar doing the type of innovative research that gets academicians across disciplines excited, or if you’re that scholar, please send an email to peerologie@gmail.com with the information above and a picture to go along with the post, or to nominate an individual. Let’s grow this valuable database and encourage interdisciplinary, innovative research!
Share with your peers!