Rather bittersweet to share that my final article for 2019 was an editorial piece I was invited to pen for the very final issue of the journal Cultural Studies Review.

Abidin, Crystal. 2019. ‘Navigating Interdisciplinarity as a Precarious Early Career Researcher’. Cultural Studies Review 25(2): 78-83. Available here: https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/csrj/article/view/6880

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The article is part of a special section reflecting on the ‘Twentieth Anniversary Colloquium: The Cultural and Communications Studies Section of the Australian Academy of the Humanities’, held in November 2018 at the University of Sydney, where a range of junior to established scholars were invited to reflect on the history and experience of Cultural Studies in Australia. I am especially grateful to my hosts Elspeth Probyn and Chris Healy for this experience.

It was a magical moment to be meeting many of the founding scholars of our discipline who had so much intellectual gravitas but were also kind and warm human beings. More crucially, I felt that these founding scholars listened and understood the recounts from early career scholars who were invited to share the difficulties and challenges we face in the academic climate today. At the post-event watering hole, many established scholars took the time to continue conversations and commit to redistributing resources and influencing institutional and administrative change wherever their (secure, senior) positions allowed them to do so.

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The introduction to the special section by Tony Bennett, John Frow, Chris Healy, and Elspeth Probyn is here:
https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/csrj/article/view/6874

And a couple of my favourite pieces are from Fran Martin:
https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/csrj/article/view/6883

And Shawna Tang:
https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/csrj/article/view/6878

I have been reading Cultural Studies Review since I was adopted into Media & Comms in the final year of my PhD, and remain grateful that it was welcoming to junior scholars, published a diversity of works on Australia and beyond, and remains Open Access until its final issue.

Chris Healy & Katrina Schlunke’s moving editorial documenting the history, milestones, challenges, and achievements of the journal is here:
https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/csrj/article/view/6939

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