Navigating the Two-Body Problem

Welcome to The Academic Life! In this episode you’ll hear about:

• What the two-body problem is
• Dr. Kelly Baker’s experience on the academic job market as a wife and mother
• How gender bias can play out in academic job searches
• Why the three-body problem is a more accurate framing of this issue
• How Kelly reimagined herself and her skill set for jobs outside the professoriate
• Kelly and Chris’s advice to other dual-career academic couples

Our guests are: Dr. Kelly J. Baker and Dr. Chris Baker. Kelly is a religious studies Ph.D. and writer. She's the author of five books, including Sexism Ed: Essays on Gender and Labor in Academia, and the co-editor of Succeeding Outside the Academy with Joseph Fruscione. Her chapter, “What Would Your Poor Husband Do? Living with the Two-Body Problem” is the basis of this episode. Currently, she's the editor of Women in Higher Education and The National Teaching and Learning Forum.

Chris has been a researcher and software developer in academia, industry, and government for over 20 years. Previously a scientist for the US Department of Energy, he developed software for the world’s largest supercomputers and published research in leading international journals. At ServiceMesh, and later CSC, Chris worked to streamline development and IT operations for numerous Fortune 1000 companies. After developing and leading the Nomad ecosystem team at HashiCorp, Chris joined Amazon Web Services as a Principal Engineer in the Core Container Technology group. Chris holds a Ph.D. in Computational Science from Florida State University.

Our host is: Dr. Dana M. Malone, a higher education scholar and practitioner. She specializes in college student relationships, gender, sexuality, and religious identities as well as assessment planning. Dana enjoys engaging conversations, delicious food, practicing yoga, and wandering the Jersey shore.

Listeners to this episode may also be interested in:

• The Freelance Academic by Katie Pryal
• Sexism Ed: Essays on Gender and Labor in Academia by Kelly J. Baker
• From PhD to Life
• Women in Higher Education
• Succeeding Outside the Academy: Career Paths beyond the Humanities, Social Sciences, and STEM, edited by Joseph Fruscione and Kelly J. Baker, The University Press of Kansas
• Dr. Frank Martela episode: Stop Chasing Happiness and Make a Meaningful Life

You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. We reach across our mentor network to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish that project, to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Wish we’d bring on an expert about something? DM us on Twitter: The Academic Life @AcademicLifeNBN.