Changes are Afoot! Finishing a Book, Leaving Academia, and Joining Liminal.

Though I haven’t been posting much on this blog, a lot has been happening in my life! It’s time, as they say, for an announcement, or several.

First, along with my intrepid co-author Melina Packer, I wrote a book! Okay, it’s not entirely done yet, but we’re close. It’s called Wild at Heart: A Feminist Science of Animal Behavior, and it’s an exploration of how we can transform the science of animal behavior when we embrace the fact that scientists are people and science is a human endeavor. Wild at Heart is being published by MIT Press in Spring/Summer 2025. I’ll make sure to post updates here as we chug along the publication pipeline!

In this book, we untangle the intertwinings of present-day animal behavior science with a whole slew of systems of power and oppression (racism, patriarchy, homophobia and transphobia, ableism, and capitalism). We also work towards weaving a renewed approach to animal behavior science that, we contend, will bring us closer to actually understanding animals’ lives, and also closer to a just world for humans and animals alike. We imagine our readers to be anyone excited about animals, interested in science, and generally on board with feminism, which includes but isn’t limited to academics. You can learn a bit more about the book in this article in Science News and this interview in Psychology Today! 

While it remains to be seen what you, the readers, think of Wild at Heart, I am proud of it! I’m hopeful that we mostly pulled off a balance of complexity and clarity, rage and joy, and breaking down and building up. My wildest ambition for this book is that it plays a nontrivial role in bringing about a radical transformation of how we think about animals and how we do science. 

In hindsight, I can see my dual trajectories of behavioral ecologist and writer (which began at ages 16 and 10 respectively, if not earlier) leading me to this book, and having had the opportunity to write it has been such a privilege. And even though it’s not an academic book, I could only really have written this book as an academic. I needed the time and mental space afforded by a “golden” year and a half of still-a-postdoc-but-with-a-tenure-track-job-in-hand for the main ideas of this book to crystallize; I needed startup funds to be able to hire my co-author as a postdoc and hire research assistants who helped us refine our ideas; I loved having the freedom to construct the foundations of this book by entirely overhauling the curriculum for an undergrad Animal Behavior course I was teaching; I had the luxury of convening a grad seminar to puzzle through key conceptual papers together with some very smart people. I’m very lucky that the Miller Institute at UC Berkeley and the EBIO department at CU Boulder made so much room for me/us to do this work. 

And yet, when I consider what my next steps are, I see those steps carrying me outside of academia. In part, it’s because I know that if I stay an academic, I will feel compelled to devote my career to reiterating, promoting, and defending the ideas in Wild at Heart. I don’t want to do this—not because I don’t think the ideas are worth fighting for, but because I want them to take on a life of their own outside of my career, on their own terms and not mine. I like the idea of letting go, and trusting that the ideas in Wild at Heart will be built upon by others, growing and shapeshifting as different people pick them up and run with them in directions I could never have imagined.

More pragmatically, it is difficult to plan and execute a career in a specific field based on an as-yet unpublished book that attempts to dismantle and rebuild that field. I simply don’t know how this book will be received, and won’t really know for years. And the book’s reception has consequences for my and others’ careers—will we get grants? Will every paper be a fight to publish? Will my students get jobs? It feels impossible—both too risky and not very fun—to continue in academia in the shadow of this substantial unknown. And so, I’m leaving my tenure track job, and will be transitioning to an adjunct role in EBIO at CU Boulder (we’re still working out what this new role entails, exactly. Incidentally, I’ve also moved back to the East Bay—if you’re in the vicinity, let’s hang out!)

In equal part, I’m leaving academia because I’ve found a thing to do next that, I believe, is exactly the right way for me to continue the work of transforming science in the directions of more humility, more creativity, and more political responsibility. I’m going to be joining forces with science communication professional extraordinaire and all-round excellent human Liz Neeley. Together, we are relaunching Liminal, a science communication strategy consulting firm that is rooted in embracing the fact that scientists are people and science is a human endeavor, which makes both science and science communication both deeply personal and politically consequential. Our goal at Liminal is to help scientists reflect on how communicating about their science to broad audiences can strengthen their science, to give scientists the tools they need to build their own science communication practices, and to help to connect them with others engaged in similar science communication efforts. And for those of you concerned about business lingo and start-up vibes, fear not—we’re working hard to set up Liminal as a member-run collective with cooperative governance. Liminal’s website is currently being revamped; you’ll be hearing more from us in 2024!

Though I’ve been a popular science writer for over a decade, I’ve only just fully realized the extent to which engaging with broad audiences about science can change the practice of science itself. I’ve told the story before of how the best part of my Ph.D. emerged from talking about my work with a high school friend—her outside perspective crystallized something that was obvious but difficult to see from within the field. Writing Wild at Heart for an audience beyond academia has felt similarly revelatory. Midway through writing, I realized I was making better arguments because I couldn’t rely on the reader possessing particular knowledge or perspectives (scientific or political), which meant I had to explain what I would otherwise have taken for granted, which meant I had to understand it more fully, which often led to the realization that I didn’t actually believe or agree with what I’d taken for granted until then. Which is to say, my thinking and my arguments became better—more humble, more creative, and reckoning more fully with the work’s political consequences—because I was writing for readers who didn’t already know what (I thought) I knew. (And to make things more delightfully meta, I only had this realization when my partner, who is not an academic, asked me to explain why I said it was more fun to write Wild at Heart as a popular science book than as an academic book). 

In some of her workshops, Liz shows a conceptual map of a way of doing science that is integrated with communicating science to broad audiences—in my time as a scientist and popular science writer, I have found myself enacting exactly this process, and I’m delighted that Liz and I both see the work of science and science communication in this powerfully entangled way. I’m very excited to keep developing and sharing these deeply transformative interconnections between scientific practice and science communication at Liminal, taking them to people and institutions working in areas of science far beyond evolutionary biology. If you think of ways in which we can work together, please reach out! (we’ll have more options for staying in touch available shortly).

In time, I’m going to write more—essays for sure, and I’d love to write another book! But I’m not sure what this writing is going to be yet. Maybe a deeply human exploration of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). Maybe a collection of poetic meditations on birds and grieving. Maybe something else entirely! When I know what it is, those of you who read this blog will be the first to know 🙂 Thank you for reading what I write, I remain abundantly grateful to you all.