Shweta Krishnan

Our Professional Development Program builds on the ethics of care and advances collaboration as a method for early career anthropologists to strengthen their capacity to act on their ethical responsibilities within the three academic pillars: research, teaching, and service. While junior scholars recognize the need to respond to extenuating circumstances in the field and within academia, the colonial, militarized, and neoliberal legacies of academic structures often leave them feeling exhausted, helpless, and isolated. With this project, we pioneer collaboration as a method for early career scholars to build towards self-care. Embodying feminist, queer, decolonial ethics, they will come to understand that care for others grows from self-care. This project has two phases: in the first, we will develop self-care resources, and in the second, we invite 60 junior scholars to participate in a virtual space of learning that involves slow, intentional self-transformation. During the course of the program scholars will become empowered to experiment, be curious, and enjoy academic professional pathways, while also gaining the ability to bridge beyond it in ways that align with their goals and commitments. Going forward, we envision this program to place collaboration as care at the heart of an anthropological sensibility.