Academic writing duos

Photo: Mia Blakstad

Most of my work is co-authored, which is not that common in philosophy or the humanities. In a feature article from Times Higher Education (THE), Matthew Reisz interviews a number of academic duos about their partnership. Stephen Mumford and I are also interviewed here about our 10 year collaboration as Team MumJum. Reading it, we were surprised to learn that so many of our own experiences – positive and negative – were shared by the other writing duos.

The Mumford-Anjum Official Statement of Authorship

Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum. Photo: Kristine Løwe, NMBU

1. Why a statement?

Our writing partnership in philosophy began in 2007, when Anjum arrived at Nottingham as a Postdoctoral Fellow. Since then, we have written three books and around 40 papers together, which seems rare, especially in philosophy. We think it’s time to issue a statement about our writing partnership, for at least four reasons.

Being a (female) academic

This week I was invited to talk to the female postdocs at my university about my experience with creating an academic career path for myself, as a woman. This is what I told them.

So you wish you had a co-author? 5 tips on what it takes to collaborate

A number of people have said to me that I’m lucky to have a co-author and I couldn’t agree more. Finding the right people to work with is not easy, and in this respect I guess some luck is needed. Still, there’s more to a successful collaboration than just luck.