I found this unpublished gem today. Now that I am on the other side of tenure, I figured I would share some of my (previously unpublished) thoughts… ****** I am in my third year on the tenure track as an assistant professor. I have had a fair number successes, a few failures, and some…
Author: Ashley Nickels
Growing Democracy Project: Website & Podcast
Check out the new website for the Growing Democracy Project: www.GrowingDemocracyOH.org! Casey Boyd-Swan and I are excited to see the launch of the website & the Growing Democracy Podcast. Check it out!
Gratitude to the ‘The Folks of Flint’
I had the privilege of working on a project of Dan White’s, The Folks of Flint, in 2017. I was introduced to Dan through the Jan Worth-Nelson, the editor-in-chief of East Village Magazine. After wrapping up fieldwork for my book Power, Participation, and Protest in Flint, Michigan. I spent the next month interviewing Flint residents…
[Personal] Reflection on Identifying as a “Critical Scholar”
Originally Prepared for: ARNOVA Conference, Austin, TX, November, 2018 My entrance into critical nonprofit and voluntary action studies was winding and non-linear. This reflection essay highlights my journey to identifying as a critical scholar, how I see this identify in relation to my identities as a scholar-activist and feminist, how critical perspectives have shaped my approach…
Three co-edited books!
This last year has been a whirlwind. I am wrapping up my second year on the tenure-track with some successes and some failures. For today, I am focusing on the successes! Between May 2017 and April 2018, I published three co-edited books. Each of the books is very different. Two are academic books and the other…
Fieldwork and Parenting
I am a parent. I am also a qualitative researcher, whose work often requires time in the field. In my last blog post I talked a bit about the challenges of avoiding “parachute research.” In that post I discussed the importance of continual reflexivity–the process of self-reflection wherein I am constantly checking my own power and privileged…
Parachute Researchers
The term “parachute researcher” refers to scientists, inclusive of social scientists, that descend on a local community (which is not their own) to collect specimens, data, or interviews; quickly leaving to conduct their analysis elsewhere. It is often associated with researchers from wealthy countries swooping in to poorer countries uninvited, but it can be applied to people like me, as well: a privileged white academic, interested in understanding the lived experiences of a majority minority city.
Do I have a unifying theme?
Do you need a unifying theme in academia? Do I have one? On the surface, my work may seem disjointed… how do feminist activist pedagogy and home rule fit together on one research agenda?
Empowered Participation: What Cities (including Flint) Can do to Foster Meaningful Participation
To date, most of my work has focused on how local governments and states are becoming less participatory as a result of budget cuts and resource shortfalls. These fiscal pressures are compounded by popular movements that call for “less government” or “smaller government” in favor of public-private partnerships and the contracting of the public services to private entities, often compromising (or eliminating) time-consuming deliberative and participatory processes.
What I learned while studying Flint’s Municipal Takeover: Pt. III
I have been warned by numerous scholars, and practitioners alike, to keep an open mind about the use of municipal takeovers. These policies are not designed, they have argued, with malicious intent. Instead, they offer, these policies are intended to help fiscally distressed municipalities deal with the reality that they are facing municipal bankruptcy or dissolution.
In other words, would I rather see these cities go bankrupt? Would it be better that the state did nothing and watched the city grow poorer and poorer? No!
That does not, however, mean that municipal takeover policies should go unquestioned. The impact of these policies are real—and deserve scrutiny.