“Don’t explain your philosophy. Embody it.” — Epictetus
Dear Colleagues,
This year marked a period of sustained work during my ongoing post-PhD transition. Rather than measuring the year only by outcomes or appointments, I wanted to reflect on what was built, honored, and sustained with intention.
Throughout a challenging academic market, I continued to show up as an independent scholar and writer, remaining committed to research, public scholarship, and thoughtful engagement with complex questions. This year reaffirmed for me that consistency, integrity, and alignment often matter more than speed.
The year began with my first campus visit interview, where I delivered a teaching demonstration on”the good, the bad, and the ugly” of the foreign aid conundrum. It felt natural being in front of the classroom with an expo marker in my hand. I belonged, and I left that campus hopeful and determined to find more opportunities.
It was perfect timing, because immediately after the campus visit, I presented on Belonging in Academia and arts-based pedagogy at APSA’s Teaching and Learning Conference. I spoke in part about the challenges of women of color (as one case study) and how imposter syndrome was not an individual shortcoming, but rather a structural condition that many WOC and minorities have to navigate.
During the final ten days of Ramadan, I performed Umrah (the Muslim Pilgrimage) in Mecca for the first time with my parents and brother, a moment I will cherish for the rest of my life. After that experience, I made a deliberate decision to remain visible as I am, including continuing to wear my hijab.
This added a new meaning to my doctoral hooding, which I shared in this Medium article here.
A central part of this year’s work took shape through two newsletters that now anchor my writing across platforms.
The Qualitative Inquisition remained my scholarly space, where I explored qualitative methods in social science, with this year’s attention on questions of belonging, identity, ethics, power, and responsibility. At it’s foundation is resisting the erasure of marginalized voices in academic and professional spaces.
Please find my final edition of 2025 here:
Planting Seeds: A Year of Qualitative Inquiry, Growth, and Transformation
I also launched Sword Dispatch, a creative companion newsletter that allows my writing to extend beyond strictly scholarly formats. Through poetry, personal essays, and curated reflections, Sword Dispatch connects my long-form blog writing, memoir writing, Medium essays, and fieldnotes, offering a more holistic view of how I think, write, and engage.
As I continue to refine arts-based and trauma-informed methods as a core component of my pedagogy and teaching philosophy, incorporating poetry, painting, and other forms of art will be critical. I continue to advocate for owning our stories and walking into our work and communities as whole selves rather than in fragments, a critical and underexamined part of the DEI and Belonging conversation. I find this approach will support inclusive scholarship for marginalized and underrepresented teachers and learners.
Alongside this writing, I continued to build academically and creatively. I crossed more than 100 Medium articles and over 275 personal blog posts, reached 100 Substack subscribers, participated in PolNet and APSA Annual Meeting and Teaching and Learning Conference (where I presented three papers), and learned that my poster paper was accepted for peer review in a special issue of a respected journal in my field.
This year, I submitted more focused academic applications, continued pitching my writing, and remained active in conference and publication pipelines.
Reaching 100 subscribers across my newsletters this month was a truly meaningful milestone. I value building community around qualitative inquiry and hold the trust of fellow writers, academics, and professionals with care, responsibility, and gratitude. Community, rather than scale, remains central to how I understand this work.
The post-PhD transition continues and has included a range of challenges that many scholars who graduated during the Pandemic continue to navigate. Still, this year marked another season of building, persistence, and preparation. My focus moving forward remains on scholarship, research, writing, and qualitative inquiry as an ethical practice that makes visible the hidden stories and realities often overlooked in dominant narratives.
In the months ahead, I will continue sharing updates on my scholarship, writing, and academic job market journey across my platforms.
Thank you to those who have read, reflected, and stayed with this work.
Cheers to another year of planting seeds!
“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.” – Robert Louis Stevenson
With sincere gratitude,
Dr. Elsa T. Khwaja
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Thank you for reading and engaging!
You can learn more about all my work HERE.
Feel free to subscribe to my academic newsletter, The Qualitative Inquisition (Qi), for insights on all things qualitative in the social sciences.
You can also subscribe to my new creative atomic newsletter, Sword Dispatch: The WkQ Letters, for insights on intersectionality, mental health, identity and social justice issues.
You can find my community-powered educational campaign: HERE.
You can donate specifically for my paintings HERE. (I will update with more on this soon!)
If you find value in my writing and want to support independent scholars, writers, and artists, you can do so HERE.
Your support helps me continue writing, reflecting, painting, and resisting!
Thank you, I wish you well on your academic, writing, and artistic journey!
