Letter 12: New Book, New Team, New Chapter!
A new book, tour, and incubating a school
2025 was a year of incubating, and 2026 is a year of connection and travel.
Contents
Practical Highlights
My first book goes on pre-order in a week or so!
I’m hiring a design strategist. Do you know one?
I’m hiring a booking agent, know anyone?
10+ friends and collaborators who’ve affirmed or encouraged how I am approaching my practice
What it takes to be an independent researcher
Managing a suite of components—a book, a framework, and a course
Growing your own team
Independent publishing
Contributing to academic journals and conferences
The shape that independent research takes
Institutional research is for people who have doctoral degrees and climb up the ranks of postdoctoral research, Assistant Professorships, Associate Professorships, and Professorships. They have full-time salaries, apply for research funding to hire teams and cover research costs, write about those projects and publish them in academic journals. Some mostly teach, some mostly do research.
Being independent means having a doctoral degree, and instead of depending on universities to fund research-based projects, it means finding your own means while writing and publishing in academic journals.
For me, being an independent researcher has meant creating my own ecosystem of a) venues and events that generate content b) writing about that content c) finding traditional and rebellious outlets for that writing.
In practice, it ideally is a course I run multiple times a year for fellow critical creative practitioners. This is the context that generates content for research. It involves writing and co-authoring about what happens in those courses. It entails writing about and publishing the goings-on in artist research, design research, and critical creative practice so they can build on previous contributions and shape future ones.
1. Managing a suite of interconnected projects
The ecosystem I’ve started to build is informed by a very common three-prong structure found in nearly all disciplines. A school is accompanied by a framework that is established by a book that describes and disseminates the framework. See the examples in the graphic below!
So far, I defined a framework in my doctoral research in 2021, am weeks away from releasing a book that describes and disseminates that framework, and in 2025, I piloted a residential course that I am working to scale this year.
🛸 My wish is to make operating and maintaining the ecosystem my full-time job! Can I be paid to write, and could that supplement my teaching? Can I be paid to teach, and could that supplement my writing?
The examples of the three-prong structure, above, are very well established, range in disciplines, and have varying objectives—from capitalistic ones to pedagogical to social-scientific. I hope to set up a smaller-scale take on this suite of components.
So, how do I figure out how to make this ecosystem my job?
Back in May 2025, I picked the brain of a friend/acquaintance, Francis, who has the kind of role I hope to land to carry my triad. He works for an applied research institute, works remotely (on a different continent, even), four days a week, and can shape his own work.
Over a period of a week or two, I had a handful of hour-long calls with friends—experts in their own fields and whose opinions I care about. I asked them, if you were in my position, how would you go about finding a host institution for their work? While I won’t share the details of our private conversation, I do share a snippet capturing the spirit:
Sep 29 2025
Mariana — Make it curious and playful, ask questions first. Don’t wait to have a perfect idea.
Oct 1 2025
Jelsen — Fantacize about people at the water cooler of an organisation or institute talking about you. Let them talk, don’t be paranoid or afraid of being strategic.
Oct 2 2025
Myfawny — Start with what you care about and make it communicable.
Oct 6 2025
Lillian — Listen closely and inspire them based on a comment they make! Look for inklings of them trusting you and your expertise. Look out for signs of micromanaging.
Oct 7 2025
Ricardo — Name what you do according to what institutional partners want to hear. Let the content be for the people you care most about.
But, maybe I don’t have to make a strategy, execute a plan, and do this work alone…
2. Growing your own team
My friend, Jeannetta, has inspired me to lean into the spirit of: delegate, delegate, delegate. I think it’s important to have solitary time to be centered—that might be a period of an hour or years. Some of us are social and collaborate by default, feeling challenged by working and thinking alone. Alone time is so precious to me, and with a clear sense of what my own work is and isn’t, I feel centered enough now to reach out, ask for help, and think and work together.
Yasmin, based in Helsinki, has been the coordinator for the course/framework I facilitate. We connected thanks to a job posting I put out, and she responded to. We worked closely last July to host politically-engaged racialized artists based in Helsinki, Stockholm, Copenhagen, and Oslo.
I’m hiring a design strategist to start working on Monday, March 23, 2026. They will take the lead on planning, contacting, and initiating partnerships with potential institutes to house the triad! Their role is to lead design strategy and business development to turn the course into an international program for politically-engaged creative professionals. Funded by the Nordic Culture Fund, 2025.
I’m hiring a booking agent to schedule 15 total bookings for my book tour between April and December 2026. Bookings will roughly involve 5 in-person events in 5 key international cities, 5 online lectures and interviews, and 5 features on major online art, design, and culture platforms. Funded by the Nordic Culture Fund, 2026.
✉️ If this direction resonates with you and you are willing to share these job openings, please do forward them far and wide.
3. Independent publishing
To publish the book, I’ve, in essence, commissioned a book publisher, Set Margins’ to produce, print, and distribute what I wrote. This is a case of one independent practitioner teaming up a fellow independent practitioner.
Read Letter 9: How to lock in an art & design book publisher, My years-long journey to see more about this process.
4. Contributing to academic journals and conferences
In the 5 years since finishing my PhD, I’ve managed to publish at least one article in an academic journal or book chapter in a book published by an academic publisher each year.
In the future, I aim to have more practice-led and practice-based PhD candidates participate in the courses I facilitate and plan co-author papers with them—in their respective creative fields. Our writing would be able to speak to the epistemic knowledge (ways of knowing) that critical creative practice can contribute, and expose precise relationships “between” theory, making, and being.
I didn’t make a new year’s resolution this year, but I made a compass—in the form of an illustration—for my upcoming year. It’s not a year of production. It’s not a year of solitary writing and research.
I made this so I can keep the moving parts in proportion.
For instance, the logistics behind all the travelling I’ll do fo the book tour may be overwhelming, but they’re really just candle-sized and warming the school of thought I’m cultivating.
For instance, something that feels challenging and new and catches me off guard is informed by the mountain ranges in the background, representing the experiences I’ve already had and relationships I’ve learned from.
I’ve been quiet in the second half of 2025, having my head down with writing and planting seeds, but I hope to connect with more of you and find ways to share ideas, friends, and politics!