How to divorce your academic discipline

Social scientists have a complicated relationship with their disciplines. They help us mature as intellectuals. They nurture us and give us the tools to pose and answer questions in a rigorous and meaningful way. 

But sometimes the relationship turns sour. Our chosen discipline prevents us from seeing or asking harder questions, limits our ability to communicate to a broader audience and leaves us lacking the tools we need to generate the data we require. In this case, it’s time for a divorce.

When our discipline no longer loves us back, however, many academics are left in a bind. We often don’t realise that it’s time to leave. We continue to submit to disciplinary journals, perform disciplinary rituals, and teach disciplinary canons. We continue to socialise the next generation to “speak to the discipline”, even when that means translating better ideas into language that peers will tolerate.

Why do we do this?

We know the Hirschmann triad of options for dealing with dissatisfaction: exit, voice and loyalty. Academics are very good at conference arguments and writing reviews: voice and loyalty. We are not so good at leaving for another field: exit. 

• An academic career is rarely a straight line
• The human side of the practitioner-to-academic pipeline
• Claim your narrative in academia by building a ‘golden thread’

So, how would you do it?

Over the past three years I’ve been going through a painful divorce with migration studies, while falling in love with the social studies of outer space. I tried voice and loyalty for years: being the good colleague and helping to build institutions, while persistently insisting that the field was simply replicating many of the racist tropes that it was trying to critique. In the end, I concluded that reform from the inside was not possible, and it was time to leave.

Result? I’m living the best version of my academic life. Zero regrets. The process of extricating myself was difficult, and may never be fully complete. However, I love my new field and feel intellectually rejuvenated. 

Here are a few strategies I have learned along the way and begun to hone at the Research Impact Studio. I hope they can help you with your own process of academic extraction and rebirth.

1. Cheat (that is, be unfaithful)

Find a new partner who reminds you of everything you dislike about the old relationship. My affair with space began with books. I hadn’t read a book on migration in years. I knew I was headed for a break-up when I found myself in bed with books on space: memoirs, popular science and garden-variety academic texts. Here was a field that was wide open, with the lines of debate just coming into view, with so many new questions begging for research and data, and with colleagues generously helping one another to discover new ground. 

By contrast, migration studies appeared to be re-litigating old battles, repeating tired mantras and jealously guarding turf. This, I concluded, was why I hadn’t read a book on migration in years. 

So, my suggestion is that if you want to leave, don’t flirt with articles. That’s escapism. If you want out, load up your Kindle and take it to bed.

2. Tell your ex it’s over

There are reasons we fell in love with our disciplines. And they know how to pull us back in: special issues, fancy speaking gigs, enticing jobs. You need to make that stop.

My answer was to scream out loud with a keynote at the peak international conference in Paris. I explained why migration studies was dead to me, and more generally why it had become an intellectual dead end. The speech divided the room, but the message was clear. Crickets followed. No more offers. No more requests. No more love.

And that, my friends, is the sound of freedom.

For those of you who are less of a diva than me, a not-so-dramatic way to achieve similar results is to simply learn to politely say no to requests for your labour. It is the best way to choose your own path.

3. Find a good lawyer

No one extracts themselves from a damaging relationship alone. You need advisers. In my case, help came in an unlikely guise: a colleague who, on the academic food chain, was “junior” to me. Enrike van Wingerden opened up the impossible world of space research, made the fanciful understandable in my limited conceptual vocabulary, and then helped me write my way out of trouble. 

One of the main reasons we stay in unhealthy relationships with disciplines is that we worry about being alone and having to fend for ourselves. So, it helps to follow the path of someone who has already taken the steps into the new discipline or field. My message to you: find your Enrike.

4. Do the work

Your ex is not the problem. It’s you. You are the product of years, maybe decades, of a bad relationship. Now you need to reshape yourself. Question everything: promotion, publication and the ethos of your profession.

In my case, this meant committing the ultimate betrayal of social science: building a business alongside my research. But this move liberated me from the very discipline that social scientists most dislike: faithfully acquiring pointless scholarly metrics. 

So, let’s thumb our noses at the naysayers and feel free to not just try on new ideas, but try out new ways of being a professional. Most of us do not dislike our discipline enough to leave it. We just keep talking about changing it.

If you want change: cheat, have “the talk”, lawyer up and begin therapy.

Be bold. Say goodbye. Live your best life.

Darshan Vigneswaran is associate professor of political science at the University of Amsterdam. He is also founder of Spaceinterface and Research Impact Studio.

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