I speak regularly on a range of topics in a range of places, especially college campuses and local, national and international conferences. Most of these talks center on areas where I have done the most work: social movements, human trafficking, slavery and emancipation, human rights, new technologies, drones and satellites, pedagogical innovation, and open access publication.
I believe universities are one of the important institutions where societies do some of their thinking. This means that the important work we do in archives, libraries, and PhD seminars must makes it way out into the world in a way that can be understood. I have worked hard to connect beyond the academy by:
- Writing for general audience, including at Slate, the Guardian, Aeon, and Al Jazeera.
- Speaking to the public and the media, including conversations with BBC, Fox News, NBC, Süeddeutche Zeitung, and QZ.
- Engaging podcasts, like New Book Network conversations about Slaveholders and #OpenAccess.
- Talking about these ideas, whether in undertheorized or overblown form, with my colleagues at universities like Yale, Harvard, Penn, MIT, Stanford, Denver, Notre Dame, Mississippi, Washington, UCSD, United Nations University, and Oxford.
- Connecting to social movements through collaborations with independent media outfits (for example, videos protest footage made with Átlátszó).