Category: Academic Whispers
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Keep ambition with global health!
Ambition to me is tied to what Ngugi wa Thiongo once described as a ‘quest for relevance.’ It is a search for a liberating perspective within which to see ourselves clearly in relationship to ourselves and to the other selves in the universe. He would go on to suggest that this question depends on the…
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Keep dreams!
Dreams begin here. With people like you. Sitting and pondering. Drinking and eating. Laughing and living. Loving and living life, our way. A dream, to sit by the ocean and think for self. To live among others like you keeping things worth keeping. To simply live. All will do. For where dreams begins, life lives…
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Keep knowing that which is in you is lit for them!
Call it dismissal. Call it ignorance. Call it visible invisibility. Call it being black and female in academia too. But know that your straight up sharp, single handled ignorance of my light, whatever you choose to call it, will not provoke this fire burning within. Not when we are legions. We are not bent or…
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Keep charting a burst of light with science/public health writing.
How might we make scientific writing inclusive? How might it move beyond its style and form, beyond its static blueprint to adapt to lives that are constantly changing? How can we speak of advancing racial and ethnic equity in science, health or medicine, if we continue to court tools and language that remain colonized? How…
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Keep dancing in the mind or writing for people!
Imagine taking seven days to frame the entire world. The kind of patience it would take to ensure that the stars and the moon are in the right place. All sorts of fishes or sea monsters swim the oceans. Mountains and hills are perfectly framed with volcanoes ready to erupt as they please. Having such…
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Keep telling stories of decolonizing anything, somethings, everything!
I liked a paper shared on Twitter yesterday. It focused on why decolonizing geosciences mattered. I loved everything I read that I felt it was critical to keep some. The fact that we have been told that certain ways of knowing and doing are superior resonated deeply with me. That and the fact that for…
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Keep embracing failure!
Writing grants has taught me how to fail 30 times. I look forward to the 31st time. Counting failures is something I do now. Something I embrace too. The hurdles or the joy. The writing. The waiting. The bearing witness to, how things we believe in crumble, for lack of funding. And I have believed…
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Keep the public in public health in mind!
Dr. Milton Terris was an outspoken advocate for progressive Public Health Policy. See this article about him here. But briefly, ‘throughout his career, Terris was always an active and dedicated member of American Public Health Association (APHA): he served as secretary of APHA’s Medical Care Section from 1948 to 1952, a member of the section’s…
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Keep knowing ‘the past is present’ with public health!
In 1968, Dr. Morris Schaefer, a Professor and Head of Department of Public Health at UNC, Chapel Hill wrote a striking paper about the current issues in delivering better health services. He presented it at the 95th annual meeting of the American Public Health Association and many of what he shared then resonates with the…
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Keep going close to lions!
Go close to lions, even if afraid, at least you’ll be close to lions. Reach above the stars, even if you fall, at least you’ll land on stars. Run fast with wild deers. Even if you loose, at least you ran with deers. Fly high with eagles, even if you tire, at least you flew…
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Keep learning from painful experiences!
Sometimes, it takes a painful experience to make us change our ways. I firmly believe this. To see the true manifestation of this word, also means you divorce yourself from the experiences and people who created or enabled those painful experiences to emerge in the first place. I wholeheartedly believe this. All the looking into…
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Keep flying to new heights!
I remember the day we met. I was summoned to a meeting at a faculty office by the Director of Health for Student Services. He was a close friend to my family. I say summoned because I tried to excuse myself from it. My excuses too were valid as I was on maternity leave. I…
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Writing with Juliet Iwelunmor 