Academic Aunties

For the final episode of season 6, we turn the mic over to newly minted Ph. D., Dr. Dani Magsumbol and fellow grad student and friend, Tka Pinnock! We're calling this, Academic Ate, where "ate" means "big sister" in Tagalog. They talk about the journey it took to get to the Ph. D. defence, the deep value of community, and what it means to have good mentorship. Enjoy this final episode and see you...

The disjuncture between the stated goals of equity, diversity, and inclusion policies and their application has long been a theme we've covered on the pod. This week, we continue this conversation with Dr. Sabreena Ghaffar-Siddiqui, co-author of the book, DEI Undone: The Rise, Fall and Rebirth of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion alongside Dr. Ardavan Eizadirad. Sabreena is an anti-imperialist, deco...

Higher education is under attack. Programs shut down in response to fascist attacks, faculty being fired for taking political stances, and being forced to do more and more for less and less. These are just a few reminders that academia is not a calling. We are, in fact, academic labourers. And at the forefront of the battles we are increasingly asked to fight are academic labour unions. On this ep...

This week we talk to Academic Aunties producer extraordinaire, Dr. Nisha Nath and her co-authors, Dr. Rita Kaur Dhamoon, Dr. Anita Girvan and Dr. Davina Bhandar about their new book, The Letters: Institutional Lives and EDI . It's an amazing work, going deep on a lot of the themes that you hear about a lot on this podcast. Here's what I said about the book when I was given the honour of providing...

For this episode of the podcast, we tackle writing, writing retreats, and why writing can be, and probably should be, a community-based practice. Last month I went on a writing intensive workshop and retreat, and I recorded a few voice memos documenting my time. Academic Aunties producer, Dr. Nisha Nath joins us on the podcast and we reflect on the importance of creating space away from everyday l...

With how abysmal the world is right now, we have probably all felt frustration that our political leaders are, at best, oblivious to our everyday concerns, and at worse, are actively trying to make our lives worse. But how many of us, when looking at all of the problems our world is facing right now, would choose to throw our hats in the ring and run for office? This week, we talk about one of tho...

This week, we are SO excited to talk to Uzma Jalaluddin about her new book, Moonlight Murder ! This is the latest instalment in her amazing Detective Aunty series. In our conversation we talk about her love for Agatha Christie, writing, why Scarborough is a hotbed of amazing writers and artists and why Kausar Khan is the anti-heroine we have all been waiting for. After you listen to this episode,...

This episode is a long time coming for us. We're tackling perimenopause and menopause. On this episode we talk about the reality of going through perimenopause and menopause in the context of capitalism, a culture of celebrity, the continual erosion of robust public healthcare and medical racism. We talk to Dr. Robin Turner, Associate Professor of Political Science at Butler University and Academi...

The most important decision that grad students have to make is who to work with as their supervisor. A common joke in grad school is that graduate student-supervisor relationships outlast many marriages. Your choice of supervisor helps determine the trajectory of your graduate and postgraduate careers with supervisors. So on this episode we talk about what its like to be a supervisor. What to expe...

A few weeks ago my eldest daughter turned 10. It's so incredibly hard to believe because of how truly how fast did time flew. Thinking back 10 years ago, it was an incredibly chaotic time. I had interviewed for a job without knowing I was pregnant. Then after I received my offer, I had to navigate across country move. Then I gave birth a month after starting my faculty position at York. It was a t...

On part 2 of Coming Home, we continue our conversation with Professors Mariam Georgia and Eisenstein Staats-Pangowish about what it means when our work is deeply tied to our homelands. This week, we talk about what home means, how we need to unlearn colonial ways of teaching, and the arrogance of western colonial academia. We also talk about why our commitments to this work drives us to teach diff...

Last summer, I had an opportunity to return home to the Philippines. It was a bittersweet homecoming. I returned in part because my family and I needed to sort out my dad's estate, but it was also joyful homecoming because I reunited with family and community. Being able to be home where I heard my language spoken everywhere, where I understood cultural scripts was a relief. But as I reflect on go...

We're just weeks into 2026, but it is already messed up. US imperial attacks on Venezuela, the ICE raids across the US and Renee Good’s murder, the kidnapping of activist Chantal Anicoche by the Armed Forces of the Philippines, continued Israeli attacks in Gaza...it's been a lot. So why are we talking this week about Heated Rivalry, the unexpected hit TV show from Crave and HBO about two hockey su...

(Audio fixed) In our last episode for 2025, we welcome back the OG auntie, Dr. Rita Dhamoon, and Academic Aunties producer, Dr. Nisha Nath for the latest instalment of our year-end conversation, Academic Aunties After Hours. It's been quite a year, but it's always wonderful to think about what inspired us, what vexed us, and what gave us joy. Hope you enjoy this conversation, and we'll see you in...

In academia you are constantly making compromises. In my time, there have been numerous instances when I've found myself having to make compromises, prioritizing academic expectations over family and community. Times where I have to hustle hard, forgoing time with my young kids just to try to get tenure. I even remember writing my PhD dissertation, seeking to ground it in community centered knowle...

There are many so-called truths in academia. One of them is the belief that academia is a calling, and that you have to relinquish everything for your career. Even if it means leaving everything behind, taking you away from family and support systems. On this episode, we challenge this truth with our guest, Dr. Jessica Ticar, an Assistant Professor of Social Work at Algoma University. We talk abou...

Academia likes to put people into a box. The pressure to stay within disciplinary boundaries is strong. For those who reject these disciplinary regimes, this can be felt personally, with gatekeepers discouraging this kind of scholarship at every opportunity. On this week's episode, we talk to Dr. Aadita Chaudhury, who  just finished a PhD in Science and Technology Studies from York University, abo...

For many of our listeners, and certainly in conversations among friends, we talk about how one of the most dangerous figures we've encountered within the university are nice white women, and I don't use the word dangerous lightly. A lot has been written about the exaltation of white womanhood and especially the collusion of white women in settler colonialism, imperialism, and more. This happens in...

In academia, it's taboo to be unserious. Not here, though, at Academic Aunties. On today's episode, we show that we can be good academics and also like unserious things by diving deep into one of my guilty pleasures, The Summer I Turned Pretty, streaming on Amazon Prime. The show, despite supposedly having a target audience of tweens and teens, became so popular among my demographic of 30+ and 40+...

Season 6 premiere! We've just started the school year and I'm realizing that I am already stressed. How can this be? The year literally just started! My goal this year was to slow down, to take it easy and to not lose sight of my health. But it's so hard to do when it seems like all the good things that we love about universities and colleges are being taken away. And it seems like the neoliberal...

Season finale! The past year, we’ve talked a lot about just how much we’ve had to fight for the university. From authoritarian leaders who wish to suppress dissent and protests in universities, particularly protests in support of Palestine, to rudderless senior administrators who suspend programs, fire long-term staff, and hire expensive and useless consultancy firms, there’s a lot of reasons to f...

The need for care - for radical care, for decolonial care, for accountable and reciprocal and emancipatory care - has never been more obvious. In a world where it is clear that institutions don’t care for us and that many of our elected political leaders just want to amass power and wealth, it is clear that it is our “communities of care” that hold us up. The importance of “communities of care” is...

 We are living in an age of fascism where you have political leaders who disregard democratic process and are going full steam ahead in shaping the world the way they want it to look like. And this world includes a depleted higher education sector that they see as enemy number one. All over, we are witnessing a move to defund higher education, pushing universities and colleges to adopt corporate,...

Higher education is under attack. You've probably heard about the cases of Mahmoud Kahlil , Rumeysa Ozturk , and Alireza Doroudi . Students, studying in American universities being arrested and disappeared for their political stances. And our academic institutions are all too willing to capitulate in the face of the fascist, anti-education turn of our leaders. On this episode, we try to make sense...

There is a backlash to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. All around us, we see the dismantlement of various DEI initiatives including in academia. Institutions and corporations that once rushed to put out statements in support of Black Lives Matter, Landback, and other social movements for justice, now seem all too ready to abandon their initiatives now that DEI is no longer trendy. It seems that t...