The Bridging the Gap team is thrilled to announce the addition of a new member of our leadership team: Emmanuel Balogun, the inaugural BtG Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Fellow. We recently sat down with him to ask about his work, hobbies, and plans for the fellowship. Welcome to the team, Emmanuel!

BTG: Tell us a bit about yourself. What drives your scholarship?

EB: What drives my scholarship is my desire to highlight the multitude of ways African countries engage with the international community. I am also very curious about the role of African expertise in IR. My research on African regional organizations was actually born out of thinking about Foreign Policy Decision Making and how African leaders use regional organizations as forums for foreign policy. As I got into the research, I became more interested in the bureaucracy of ROs and the creative ways they would try to get their job done. As a result, my scholarship is driven by a desire to see how expertise and resourcefulness among African bureaucrats gets turned into governance.

Growing up as a First-Generation Nigerian American, I would often hear stories from my dad and family members about how great it was to grow up in Nigeria, yet these stories were not the same stories I would hear in school, if I heard them at all. I always said that I would want to have a career where I could learn more about Nigeria and where my family comes from and a career that would allow me to travel and learn on the continent. I think this also drives my scholarship, in that I want to better understand the social and political contexts of Africa and better understand my own connection to the continent.

BTG: What’s your favorite part about teaching?

EB: My favorite part about teaching is seeing students get excited about making connections. The connections are not always profound, but I genuinely enjoy seeing students apply material in the course to something in their other courses, or something they have experienced in their own lives. Relatedly, I just enjoy the journey of the semester. The difficulties, the weeks where everyone is struggling to get through the materials, and just the overall challenge of getting students to think critically about course content, while also thinking reflectively about how they situate themselves in the world. Teaching is also a great opportunity to try out my dad jokes. Most of all, I truly enjoy helping students through the learning process and I see the learning process as truly collaborative. I learn a lot from my students and I hope that they leave my classes having been challenged in a way that helps them in other courses down the line.

BTG: What about your interest and activities — how do you spend your time outside of work?

EB: I have a 3 year old and a 10 month old, so a lot of my activities outside of work currently involve singing, acting out Disney movies, and conflict resolution. I really value and enjoy spending time with my family.  But in general, I watch a lot of basketball (go Celtics) and I am trying to get back into playing competitively; I am rediscovering my love for video games, and I am a huge hip-hop fan—I am currently re-listening to the early catalogs of DMX (RIP), De La Soul, and NY Drill music. I also have a long commute, so I have been able to listen to more podcasts. My current favorites are Hear to Slay, the Bodega Boys, the NBA Mismatch, and Trade Talks.

BTG: Why did you want to get involved with Bridging the Gap?

EB: I’ve always wanted to think about how to make my work relevant to the audiences that would benefit from the implications of my work. In my conversations with policymakers and practitioners that I meet and work with on the continent, they often tell me that they do not engage with political science scholarship on Africa for a lot of reasons, but mainly because of accessibility and the tone of the scholarship. I think Bridging the Gap will help me personally keep these questions of accessibility in the forefront of my research moving forward and be more intentional about including the perspectives of my colleagues on the continent in my work. 

Relatedly, I wanted to work with Bridging the Gap because I think there is a great opportunity in this moment to really rethink questions of equity and access in our discipline. I’ve admired the work of Bridging the Gap from afar, but never thought I’d be able to participate in any of the programming, as I did not think I was the type of scholar they would be interested in. Once I saw they were looking for a Diversity Fellow, I thought it’d be a great opportunity to get involved and work collaboratively to seek out ways to make BtG more accessible to those who are also interested in “bridging the gap” but feel they might not have an entry point into this space.

BTG: Why is it important for scholars to share their work with policymakers and the public?

EB: Again, I come back to access. What good is it if we as scholars have something important to say or have an interesting finding and it is gated in an academic journal somewhere? Also, I think it is important for the public to know and be able to access information that we produce as scholars. I think we see this with the crowd sourced syllabi produced over the years and the anti-racism reading lists that proliferated over the summer. While I have some criticisms of these syllabi and reading lists, the fact that scholars were quickly able to deploy scholarly resources for public discussion/consumption in such an immediate and effective way, offers a necessary kind of access for the public to gain deeper understandings about politics and society that I think will lead to a more engaged public. 

It is a two-way street—scholars also get a lot out of sharing our work. For me, it’s allowed me to focus more on the important points of my scholarship—the “so what” of my research, if you will. Being able to distill complex academic arguments in a way that is intelligible for policymaker and public consumption I believe is an invaluable skill. It is also a way to potentially boost the profile of scholars who have great ideas, but have been boxed out of traditional dissemination outlets due to their position in the academy.

BTG: What do you see as some of the challenges confronting underrepresented groups in writing and disseminating policy-relevant scholarship?

EB: There are a lot, but if I must pick a couple, I will say tokenization/representation and legitimacy. I think many people will point to the issue of representation first, and rightfully so. When you look at policy makers or the field of political science (IR in particular), there is an issue of racial representation. Those of us who are black in the discipline, there is the issue of us being tokenized to only speak to “black” issues. For example, the black American that must only study Race and Ethnic Politics, or the black IR scholar who could not possibly be an expert on the EU and/or South Asia. These elements of tokenization and the lack of racial representation might lead to underrepresented scholars not receiving the opportunities for policy engagement because of a perceived lack of expertise. This is why I value the work of Women Also Know Stuff and POC Also Know Stuff, because their mandate is to force underrepresented groups into the space and legitimize our knowledge. 

I also think a significant challenge is knowing where to start/how to engage. For those who do not have the “pedigree” (I hate this term) and were not educated in spaces where everyone has access to policymakers or colleagues/professors who have policy connections, how would they know how to get their research in the hands of someone at a think-tank? How would one know the process of what it takes to write for the Monkey Cage for example? Academia and political science are still very gated and guarded, which I think poses a significant challenge to underrepresented groups and their ability to engage in policy-relevant work.

BTG: What are some of the things you hope to do with Bridging the Gap this year?

EB: I am hoping to build partnerships with groups who are already doing excellent work to make political science and international affairs more equitable. One of my main goals as Diversity Fellow is to work towards creating more of a pipeline from graduate school to post-doctoral studies for underrepresented scholars to engage in this space. I also hope to build on efforts for BtG to engage with undergraduate students as well. 

I am also interested in thinking more about how to mainstream equity and inclusion in BtG programming. I am planning to do an internal climate survey with the BtG leadership team and a broader engagement with BtG alumni to see where they believe equity and inclusion could be improved within BtG. Alongside this, I want to think about how we can broaden our conception of the policy space, to think about those scholars who want to engage with practitioners beyond DC and engage with the practitioners in their area of research.  

Finally, I hope to create what I call a Bridging the Gap “Makers Space” which I envision to be a collaborative space with other like-minded organizations to focus more on how we make the practices in academia and in the policy world conducive to the lived experiences of Black people, queer people, gender non-conforming folx, and people with disabilities.

Hilary Matfess is a PhD candidate at Yale University, an incoming professor at the University of Denver’s Korbel School, and a 2020-2021 United States Institute for Peace (USIP) Peace Scholar Fellow. She will participate in the Bridging the Gap NEW Era workshop in 2021. Her work has been published in International Security, Security Studies, Stability, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, and African Studies Review. Her first book, Women and the War on Boko Haram, was published in 2017 with Zed Publishers. Relevant to this article, she has also completed several marathons and looks forward to the return of in-person races!

Throughout graduate school, I heard the same, well-intentioned refrain over and over from fellow graduate students, faculty members, and family: “the dissertation is a marathon.” I generally responded with a half-hearted “yeah” and a shrug – sure, it’s hard and time consuming and long so why not call it a marathon? But now, as someone who’s completed both a dissertation and a handful of marathons, I can definitively say that writing a dissertation isn’t runninga marathon; it’s training for one. 

This difference is more than jock semantics. Shifting from a mindset that frames your dissertation as a singular feat of endurance to one that underlines the process of preparation can help graduate students avoid burnout and right-size their perception of what the dissertation signifies.  A training mindset can help academics better balance work-life balance and identify sustainable patterns of work.

“Trust Your Training” 

Running a marathon is, even under the best circumstances, pretty monotonous. You’re going to move your body at more or less a steady pace for 26.2 miles. Training, for a marathon, however, requires integrating several different types of exercises into your routine; there’s the classic “long runs,” easy runs, fast runs, and even strength training. A marathoner who only ran long runs would underperform and risk injury. 

Just like you don’t one day go out and run 26.2 miles, you don’t just wake up one day and write a dissertation – both processes require setting smaller, discrete goals that build on one another over time. Writing a dissertation isn’t just setting words to page – it’s a task comprised of a myriad of other cumulative and complementary tasks like identifying a viable research question, producing a research design that leverages the methods best suited to your research question, collecting or generating data, analyzing that data, editing, presenting drafts to peers and advisors, identifying relevant literature, and proofreading.  Setting SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-specific) goals while writing a dissertation can help graduate students consider the different components of the project and consider a realistic timeline for completing each individual component. 

Identifying shorter-term accomplishments is a way to keep graduate students and those training for the marathon on-track and enthusiastic about the process. For example, some marathon training programs actually suggest that runners race shorter distances as a part of their training. This helps runners not only know their true “race pace” and get a feel for what race day will be like, it allows them to pepper a sense of accomplishment throughout their marathon training. So too can graduate students use side projects and intermediate milestones to both further their dissertation efforts and mark their progress along the way. 

There is evidence that “small wins” boost motivation at work, so graduate students should seek out and celebrate their small wins to help keep them on track to achieve their larger goals. Presenting a draft dissertation paper or chapter at a conference, working on a coauthored project on a topic tangentially related to your dissertation topic, or translating your academic research into mass-audience publications can all help keep graduate students motivated and enthusiastic about their work. 

When training for a marathon, you have to balance running with the rest of your life. I’ll admit that the jokes about marathon runners being obsessive and insufferable about their training are warranted to a degree, but ultimately marathon training can’t be the entirety of someone’s identity. Similarly, graduate students need to cultivate a sense of self that’s not related to work. This can be exceptionally difficult – after all, so many of us care deeply about our work and are often making considerable sacrifices (both in terms of salary and in our personal lives) to pursue this degree. Yet maintaining a distinction between the work that we do as graduate students and the people that we are is critical for living a fulfilled life, avoiding burnout, and combatting the culture of “workism.”

One study of economics graduate students noted that “62% of students worry always or most of the time about work when not working” and that 20.5% of students found themselves too tired for activities in private life always or most of the time.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, these students expressed the biggest regrets over “how they organize their timeand engage with their studies.” These findings suggest that preserving aspects of our identity, apart from our position as graduate students, is important for mental health. Given the emergent evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the mental health crisis among graduate students, ensuring that your identity is not enmeshed with your work may be all the more important.

Support Systems

While running a marathon, you’re often surrounded by people. There are other runners, aid station volunteers, and spectators. The mood is jubilant— literal strangers are cheering you on! It’s an incredible experience and a heartening display of humanity and support. In contrast, training for a marathon can be pretty lonesome and requires strategies for maintaining motivation. 

Whether you’re working on your dissertation or tackling your daily run, there is rarely someone cheering you on. Tapping into your intrinsic motivation or identifying external sources of motivation is an important part of finishing the dissertation. Intrinsic motivation is often praised for being more durable and reliable than external motivation. Remembering why your work is important and why you cared about the question in the first place can help cultivate intrinsic motivation, even when the work gets tedious or frustrating. 

Even the fiercest self-starters may also benefit from developing external accountability mechanisms. Just as you may join a running group to get you through difficult parts of the training (and also to make friends), joining initiatives like #ACWRIMO and building your own writing groups can help keep you on track and foster a sense of community. Writing groups, whether convened online or in-person, can provide opportunities for feedback, help academics set aside time devoted specifically to their dissertation projects, and provide powerful accountability mechanisms – in addition to building a sense of community and solidarity. 

Of course, self-bribery can also be effective. To get myself through the hard slog of the last few miles of a long run, I’ve frequently passed the time by thinking about the jar of peanut butter waiting for me at home. Rewarding yourself for getting through a difficult project or for achieving an intermediate goal can also help keep momentum going throughout the course of writing your dissertation. Mirya Holman described her tiered reward system for #ACRWIMO in her #MHAWS newsletter it’s something that I’ve adopted for projects year-round. 

Avoiding Burnout 

Marathon training also involves taking purposeful rest between workouts. In contrast, during the race, you’ll likely only take a few minutes to stop at an aid station. If your approach to rest while writing a dissertation resembles the latter, rather than the former, you’re setting yourself up for mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion. One cannot crank out a dissertation with the social equivalent of a dixie cup of Gatorade and a handful of jelly beans. 

Just like people training for a marathon schedule a rest day, so too should graduate students set aside time to rest. My friends give me (well-deserved) flak for sending google calendar invitations to hang out, but if I don’t explicitly schedule time away from work, the impulse to work all the time will take over. Graduate school can be a years-long demonstration of Parkinson’s Law (that work expands to fill the time that you’ve allotted to it); setting aside purposeful times to not work can counter that. 

Something will probably go wrong during the course of your dissertation. A training mindset can help graduate students understand what is necessary to get them across the finish line, despite challenges. Runners that encounter injuries or disruptions to their training schedule can adjust their training plan. Similarly, a training mindset can help graduate students respond to challenges (say, a global pandemic) with minimal despair and maximum flexibility, prioritizing the absolutely critical tasks that need to be done to complete the dissertation (Mara Revkin’s helpful guideon finishing a dissertation under non-ideal conditions is instructive about how to prioritize tasks). 

What Comes Next?

Perhaps the most important way in which writing a dissertation differs from running a marathon is what happens after you cross the finish line. The end of the marathon is the end of the marathon; you get a medal and hopefully a lot of rest. The end of the dissertation, however, is the start of another process; it’s, in fact, just the beginning of your career. Just as those who trained poorly for their marathons are often laid-up on the couch for weeks after the race, vowing to never run again, developing bad habits in the course of writing a dissertation can set you up for failure after you defend. The habits that you are developing as a graduate student writing a dissertation will carry over into your career after graduate school – meaning that developing a sustainable work pattern is key. Both marathon training and writing a dissertation are long processes that prepare you for the next fun, but grueling, endeavor.