Maggie Mang. Completed Biosketch 2040.

Key words:

-       Critical pedagogy / teacher

-       Mentor

-       Writer

-       Interdisciplinary scholar

-       Community Engagement

-       Care and care work

-       Collaborator

-       Creative  

Description:

In the year 2040, I will be 45 years old. I continue to take as inspiration fellow Sketch Group participant Srishti Sood’s comment during our first workshop about being guided by values in a research project/career rather than any kind of predetermined products/careers themselves. I suppose one of the main reasons I feel “lost,” so to speak, is because I view things like careers as quite horizontal – so long as certain values or attributes about the career is in place, I’d like to believe that there are a variety of places (both within and outside of academia) that I could land. In that way, I’m open to staying within an academic space, but also am excited by the prospect of developing alt-ac skills, even if I am mystified about what they might be. So this BioSketch 2040 is less about definite careers, and instead is more of a rumination about the personal values that I’d like to cultivate long into 2040 and beyond.    

            The one certain thing I felt upon writing up this biosketch is my commitment to critical and engaged pedagogy and the aspiration I have to be a teacher. On first pass, that could mean primarily teaching in a university space. But by 2040, I will have more critically pushed back against the idea that teaching only happens at (well-funded, high-ranking, well-known) universities. I will continue to lean into the vibrant possibilities posed by the emergence of informal learning spaces and of what alter-university spaces can be. Most of all, I would like to see what STS can do in those spaces, building on already existing and exciting work on STS as critical pedagogy. Everything else in my key words section – but especially mentoring, collaborator, and care/care work –  signals my commitments to the multifaceted relations around me, and of the primacy in nourishing those in any career (and life) I hope to hold.