Writing together
"We are writing this book as social scientists, practitioners of sustainable living, and a couple". My partner and I have started working on one of our dreams, to write a book together. Just the two of us. We have co-authored many articles and a book with our colleague. We have written many solo works too, and co-authored with fellow humans. But this collaboration is very special to us. Some other dreams of ours include doing a research project together and supervising a PhD student together.
We met through work. In 2020 when my first solo authored paper was published, he emailed me to say some kind words about the paper and ask whether I was also looking into the link between degrowth and critical realism. We decided to explore this link together, and this is how our first co-authored work and our collaboration came into being. We met in person only when I moved from England to Sweden though, around a year and a half after our collaboration began. After we met, we wanted to spend more time together. And eventually we became a couple.
Apart from having common research interests, we are practitioners of sustainable living. We practise minimalism, avoid flying and driving and implement many other practices that I have disclosed in this autoethnography.
It feels wonderful that our dream of writing a book together is coming true. But there are other feelings as well. We decided to write another work together partly as an act of protest, an act of non-compliance with fear and judgement. There is a lot of judgement, and I am not the only woman in academia who experiences this. Oftentimes, fellow women, especially young women in academia, ask me about collaborating with their partners. It looks like working together with a partner is stigmatised. Some are not as open as we are about working with their loved one. Their close friends, colleagues and HR know about their relationship but generally they avoid discussing it too much. Some avoid writing together, or impose restrictions upon themselves regarding the number of common publications. Women especially fear being seen as an attachment. They fear not being taken seriously in academia if they have some publications co-authored with their partner. It is particularly bad when there is a difference in where these humans are in their career. For example, when my partner and I began our collaboration, I just received my PhD, and he was associate professor. This led some fellow humans to think that he was either my supervisor or was somehow helping me. Yet, he was never my supervisor. By the time he got in touch with me, my PhD was finished and my first paper published. As for help, we help each other as much as we can, and this is beautiful.
I resigned from my position in a Finnish university because they were not supportive of my relationship with my partner. My resignation was an act of protest against harassment and violence in academia.
When I moved to Denmark, I was hoping that the struggles were over. We sketched a funding application that brought our expertise together. Our Danish university initially said we cannot do a project together because we are a couple. Then they changed their mind and asked us to simply disclose our relationship in the funding application.
One piece of advice that I have received from fellow humans was to keep our relationship under the radar. Yet another one is to avoid publishing together. But this goes against my values and does not bring to the surface violence, harassment and judgement that couples in academia experience, especially when they work together.
In my view, collaborating with a partner is beautiful. Fellow humans who read our articles and books usually do not see what goes into them. Endless discussions, growth through our collaborations, debates at the dinner table, talking about philosophy of science when we walk together in a park. There is so much creativity, care, support, vibrancy.