Talk to any professor and they will proudly tell you that they do academic research. They will happily tell you what their research is about and where it is published. Being academic is a badge of honor to them. Talk to the general public, on the other hand, and they will often equate “academic” with that obscure stuff generated in ivory towers with no connection to the real world.
This is clearly a marketing problem.
Ever since I decided to get my doctorate, I committed myself to producing accessible forms of my research in addition to the scholarly versions. If I was going to do good research, I wanted it to have influence. But let’s face it, no matter how insightful, most academic journal articles are read by about ten people. And that is no way for society to learn from the great research conducted at our universities and colleges…
Social Advocacy And Politics: It’s Academic, But Is It Social?
