Academic and creative freedom ... behind a mask or not?

September 23, 2014 6:16 PM

Got a PhD, got a cushy research job that I really like, but have extracurriculars that I'd like to pursue and have concerns about pursuing them under my real (academic) name.

I am a researcher in a social science field - something like health economics. I've got a great full-time job at an independent, nonprofit research institute (sort of a cross between a think-tank, a consulting firm, and an academic research center at a big university). All of my work is funded by government contracts or grants, but I haven't yet had to do much of my own grantwriting. I really like my job and am well-paid with a sweet, flexible schedule that doesn't require much more than 40 hours a week.

I also have several passionate extracurricular interests. I get curious about something and do a deep dive to try to understand it, and inevitably I want to do something with what I've learned. Specifically, right now I'm really interested in food science and cultures as they relate to fungi, bacteria, yeasts, fermentation, and the human microbiome. I don't have any formal training in this area, but am enjoying teaching myself.

I'm also really interested in cannabis legalization and the various implications of what's happening around that. I have the academic qualifications to do some of this research, but haven't published anything directly in the field yet. My own institution turned down an application I submitted for a small, internal grant, saying my application was "somewhat premature" -- I suspect this is related to my lack of publications in that area (I have plenty of other pubs).

I'd really love to do work in both these interest areas. Ideally, someday I'd like to go out on my own and start a small research group/home business (or two) focused on one (or both) areas. So I've started laying the groundwork by building a couple of websites (which I will share via PM if you're interested).

So here's my first question. If you were in my shoes, would you put your full, real name on the website mastheads/about pages for these sites? I hesitate because I'm worried about someone from one of the government agencies that funds my work finding it. But I'd like to start building a reputation (and developing my own expertise/knowledge base) through blogging about both topics. I'd like to be able to be really clear about my credentials (for the cannabis site especially), but I'm not sure how specific I should be.

Second, related issue: I'm also a musician. After spending the past 10 years in school, I'm finally ready to turn my attention back to music again -- specifically, I want to explore solo home recording projects and pursue some kind of regular musical collaboration, even if just a weekly jam session, with other people. So here's my second question: would you, in my shoes, use a pseudonym/stage name for your muscial projects? I have one picked out already and have started to think about branding (for lack of a better word). But at the same time, it feels a little schizophrenic to be dividing myself in that way. I really respect people like Christian Rudder, cofounder/president of OKCupid and member of the band Bishop Allen, for having a coherent identity that seems pretty holistic. But again, I worry about clients shying away from awarding contracts if they Google me and find out I have this... um... edgier side.

Open to any and all advice about this issue -- which I guess boils down to having fractured identities versus a single coherent story and the risks associated with each option. Thanks in advance for your help. I'd appreciate knowing your approximate age when you answer, since I suspect there may be generational trends in the responses, as well as your own personal experiences with having/not having a single identity.

posted by sockpuppetryarts to Work & Money (11 answers total)

If you are worried about mixing up your professional and private identities, then address that anxiety by going by a stage name for the latter. You could always reveal yourself later if you wanted to.
posted by oceanjesse at 6:29 PM on September 23, 2014

I've used a stage name/pseudonym for creative work so that I don't appear in Google searches for my real name. I don't work very hard to keep it "secret" (which is increasingly impossible thanks to the context collapse of Facebook and other social media, anyway), but it allows me some measure of detachment from my professional identity.
posted by Superplin at 7:58 PM on September 23, 2014

Best answer: I have a friend who is professionally known as Firstname Lastname, but publishes her photography as F. Middlename Lastname and is known in arts & activist circles as Middy Lastname. Her friends know all this (though it can still get confusing -- Middy? Oh, you mean Firstname!), but casual observers and mere aquaintances don't make the connection. She has a moderately uncommon last name, but lives in a big enough city that people wouldn't assume any relationship. If something like that works for your name, that might be a nice option, since you'd have a claim on both monikers.

For publishing/academic work, however, I'd try to use only one name, since the diversity of your work under a single name will not be nearly as difficult to explain as publishing with two identities.
posted by Westringia F. at 8:04 PM on September 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Also: I personally have done both my professional work (STEM research) and political activism (union organizing) under the same name, and I have owned both openly on the web and on my CV with the attitude that I don't want to work anyplace that judges me for my activism. This has worked out just fine. (I am approximately 40 years old, as is the friend I described above.)

I post here with a handle, though!
posted by Westringia F. at 8:14 PM on September 23, 2014

Playing witht identities is fun. You might find a few things you'd like to be show up when you're begin someone else. I say do it.
posted by egypturnash at 8:33 PM on September 23, 2014

Here's the thing: If you establish an 'online' or similar reputation with a pseudonym, it may be hard to enter the 'peer review' game (for publication in academic journals and grant applications) when your pseudonym has no academic track record.

In other words, peer reviewers -- implicitly when reviewing papers and explicitly when reviewing grants -- make an evaluation of you the writer. That evaluation includes where your PhD is from, who your mentors were, who have you published with in the past, etc. While in principle it shouldn't be hard to arrive on an academic scene and have your work judged on its own merits, independent of its authors, it never actually happens that way.

If you apply for a grant with the pseudonym, how do you fill out the biosketch? Do you report that you earned a PhD from the place that you did? And if the grant agency tries to verify this and finds that your pseudonym has no PhD? What then?

I guess the tricky thing is jumping from 'online' worlds where you can establish a reputation independent of the traditional credentialing mechanisms to the academic world where reputation depends in part on traditional credentialing mechanisms, for better and worse. It's that you include this jump in your plan that makes me wonder how you can possibly make that jump.
posted by u2604ab at 8:34 PM on September 23, 2014

Best answer: I always err on the side of non-disclosure. For now, do your extracurriculars under some sort of pseudonym. In the age of Google, once you've attached your actual name to these endeavors, there's no way to take that back. There's nothing stopping you from putting your real name out there later down the line.
posted by litera scripta manet at 8:35 PM on September 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Best answer: What's the advantage of blogging about either of the first two projects now? What do you feel you're gaining by sharing your learning process? Did you blog the drafts of your dissertation?

I would ask myself why I wanted to blog about things that I was still learning and processing myself. It sounds like you have interests but that you don't know much about the two areas you mentioned to be asking research questions just yet. I would wait until I had a better handle on the topics - until I really understood the questions in the area and how I might address them - before blogging about them.

As for the band, go ahead. People have hobbies. No one is going to take issue with you having a band website with solo projects or recordings from jam sessions. Unless you're in a Satanic death metal group or something. Then you might consider a pseudonym.
posted by sockermom at 9:58 PM on September 23, 2014

Best answer: Also, if I were in your shoes and I had a cushy, 40-hour a week job using my PhD for a good salary, there is no way that I would leave that kind of gig anytime remotely soon to "start a small research group/home business (or two) focused on one (or both) areas." I'm not even sure what that would look like; it sounds like you aren't, either. Stick with the job you have, at least for the foreseeable future. It sounds like it's a pretty great deal. I'm speaking as a social science PhD myself.
posted by sockermom at 10:04 PM on September 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

Best answer: For me, a stage name wouldn't work. I tend to feel emotionally closer to my hobby-based friends than I do to my work associates, and I don't know that I'd feel right about giving them a "fake" name. I would have trouble meeting new people and deciding how to introduce myself. I mean, if you sign up for a gym class at your local YMCA, what name do you use - does it make a difference if it's the Y near work or near home? It would be fairly easy to see the separation for music/arts vs work, and fairly easy to justify some obfuscation for marijuana legalization websites, but it sounds like you don't always have such a sharp line - if you got more into your microbiome work, and had the opportunity to be involved with it professionally, would a pseudonym hinder that?

I like the idea Westringia F suggests of working a variation on your legal name. If you don't have a workable middle name, maybe one of the more unusual nicknames of your first name, or something that at least has believable assonance or correlation (Emily/Molly Julie/Lea Jennifer/Jay) or the old-school appearance-based nicknames (Slim, Red), but keep the same last name. An entirely different pseudonym works for areas in which pen names are a thing (novelists, actors, artists, musicians, columnists, bloggers, reenactment, etc) but I'd imagine it being awkward when the worlds overlap, especially since neither of your names is likley to be particularly (in)famous. (You're James Smith? I thought you were Richard Jones!) But with a different nickname, you can cloud the waters of a google search without making it such a big hairy deal. Also easier to cash checks if the last name matches.
posted by aimedwander at 7:40 AM on September 24, 2014

Best answer: Do you have any sort of blog already where you write about your research? You can always add blog posts responding to other current research around cannabis stuff. Then, if you can start to build up a network of social scientists investigating the legal status of cannabis then you can start to make more mature, informed claims about how you will contribute to that field and have some success with securing funding and start transitioning your research focus towards it. My PhD is about one topic, but my public blog discusses it alongside the wider issues of my field which are often only tenuously related to my current project, in part because I'd like to transition away from my academic work (TV history) toward more general, professional work in moving image archiving/heritage. So for me, my name is mostly associated with my academic/professional profile so I can network and job hunt effectively (also, my work happens to be my passion).

That said, I'm not ashamed of my interests, hobbies and personal life. Personally, I occasionally talk about my extracurricular activities and hobbies on social media (facebook, tumblr, twitter, forums, metafilter) but any time I've tried to start brand new pseudonymous blogs (e.g. knitting or crafting, amateur dramatics, cocktails, gluten-free cooking, personal style... my life is littered with defunct blogs) they burned out pretty quickly, because I did not really have the time to dedicate to them as well as actually doing the interest or hobby in question.

With the music, loads of musicians have stage names. It might help prevent you from spamming your personal/professional networks with your music, but I don't think it's necessary.
posted by dumdidumdum at 8:22 AM on September 24, 2014