Catching and making waves in an academic life

Daly, Kathleen (forthcoming). “Catching and making waves in an academic life.” Annual Review of Criminology, 10.

In this article I trace my memories growing up in the US Northeast, South, and Midwest; my 8-year gap; serendipitous encounters leading to university, graduate school, and jobs in the US and Australia; and my evolving areas of research. Before academia, I was motivated to be economically independent and employable. Once in academia, I was motivated to participate in new waves of thought and to make waves with critique and new concepts. Timing matters in an academic life. I began when academic work was a site of liberty and transcendence. Today, depending on where you are, academic work is sliding into restricted conditions and precarity, and increasingly, a site of immanence. Still, it is a privileged role, and there are new waves to catch, make, and create, even in hard times.   

This autobiographical essay was invited by the Editors of the Annual Review of Criminology,