Academic blogging

If you've ever explored my blogroll, you already know that it includes a fair number of academic bloggers. In the past two days, I discovered several blogs that some of my readers might find interesting.

The Academic Life is written by a relatively junior international relations (IR) scholar. Like me, the author seems to be a basefall fan (though apparently a Yankee fan). The blogger writes fairly long and interesting posts about academic conferences, foreign travel, teaching, scholarship, etc. Specialists will be interested, but others might want to check it out too. For this individual, the act of checking out the blog (and thus relating to the blogger) would be quite important.

The Republic of Heaven is a new blog coauthored by a female spouse of an IR scholar (under the pseudonym Mrs. Coulter) and "Lee Scorseby" who may be the academic spouse. Lee's posts have made frequent reference to a number of other political blogs, including a number on my blogroll.

Mrs. Coulter has a four month old daughter named Lyra, which I recognized as the name of the main character in Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass. This was the first book in a trilogy, but so far, this is the only one my oldest daughter and I have read together. At age 11, with a very advanced reading level (according to her school's standardized tests), she rarely wants me to read to her anymore. For all I know, she may have read others in the series. I haven't.

In any case, Lee Scorseby is the name of a balloonist in Lyra's world. While living at Oxford early in the first book, Lyra has a friend named Roger...but he spells his name without the "d."

If I were a betting man, my guess is that I've met these academic bloggers at IR conferences...and have likely even shared a beer with them. If not, perhaps at a future conference?

Finally, I'll be watching "colonel sturgeon," a new blog authored by one of my former graduate students.

Happy reading.