Our new home
It has been a while since I wrote a blog post for aKIDemic Life – as for many of you, I’ve found COVID has put lots of things on pause. Now, thanks to a great partnership with IAMAS (International Association of Maternal Action and Scholarship), aKIDemic Life has made the move to a new home (https://iamas.com/akidemic-life/), and we are breathing new life into the blog!
IAMAS
For those of you unfamiliar with IAMAS, it “is a scholar-activist, interdisciplinary, non-profit organization designed to promote empowered mothering via research on and advocacy for (and with) mothers. This work is rooted in a belief that mothers who are supported by their families, communities, businesses, and governments thrive and help their child(ren) thrive.” What this means is aKIDemic Life is supported by a great organization that will advocate for you and is actively doing research into the challenges you face. This complements the work of aKIDemic Life: we want to empower you to balance home responsibilities with your academic role.
Where to find help on the aKIDemic Life website
To kick off our new series of blog posts, I am going to give you a whistle-stop tour around the aKIDemic Life website. We want to help you find all the great curated content already posted. The key areas of aKIDemic Life are:
Your Journey
We curate resources targeted at different stages in your career and caring journeys. There is information relevant to you, whether you are planning a career break or relocating to an unfamiliar city for a new job.
COVID-19
We provide help keeping your family entertained during lockdown. While we were really hoping lockdown would be a thing of the past, it keeps rearing its ugly head. So, we have found an array of activities to help keep your family entertained (and sane) while stuck at home.
Resources
We link to other carers working in academia. Not everyone has a local support network, so we show you where can you find your online ‘village’. These groups will help you get through the challenging times and be with you to celebrate the wins.
We highlight funding specifically targeted at those with caring responsibilities. These links take you to fellowships for researchers returning from career breaks and grants to cover childcare. You can even find out where to get support for conference attendance when you have your family in tow.
We direct you to information on your rights as working parents. Our links to national policies are aimed at keeping your informed about your working rights and responsibilities. If your country is missing from our list and you can link us to the appropriate information, we would love to hear from you.
Our Blog
We welcome contributions to our blog. If you have ideas for content or are looking for a particular type of resource then please get in touch (info@akidemiclife.com). The aKIDemic Life blog is dedicated to providing support, tips and advice to parents and carers working in academia and research. Please let us know if you have stories of how you overcame a particular barrier or where to find support to in relation to parenting challenges. Chances are there are others out there facing the same challenges and who would benefit from hearing your story.