This went over the wires during my writing hiatus of the past two months, but Kristina Kilgrove had a piece at her wonderful blog, Powered by Osteons, on blogging as academic public outreach. Her thoughts are not unlike my own in starting this blog. But she makes an interesting observation:
What’s interesting about Rakita’s list of bioarchaeology bloggers, though, is that not one of us has a tenure-track position. Katy is a PhD student, David is working on his master’s, and I have my PhD but haven’t found a permanent position yet. Don’t get me wrong – there are some awesome job-having bio- and archaeo- bloggers out there like John Hawks, Kate Clancy, and Rosemary Joyce. But many of the heavy-hitters in anthro outreach blogging, like Krystal D’Costa and the Savage Minds crew, are from various levels of academia as well as outside it.
The spread of blogging throughout the academic world, scientific and non-scientific, seems to suggest that this pattern will change in Anthropology sooner, rather than later. Nevertheless, the challenge remains in Anthropology to find the right path to successfully incorporating blogging into the professional job cycle.
