Can we talk about academic precarity and the committments we make in community-engaged research? #AcademicTwitter #AcademicChatter #phdchat

I'm about to enter the last year of a 3-year postdoc. I love my research, my supervisor, and the courses I teach @UWpgHistory. Perhaps more importantly, I've made community connections with TB survivors, families, and organizations through my postdoc project and @TBPhotoProject

I have opportunities right now to expand @TBPhotoProject in ways that will benefit Indigenous TB survivors, families and communities in so many ways and educate the general public about the histories of Indian hospitals and Indian #tuberculosis hospitals in Manitoba & Canada

All of this work, however, is contingent on my having a role in academia. The job market for historians in Canada was crap before COVID, and it's going to be even worse now.

There are opportunities outside of academia to engage the same skills and knowledge that I am using right now as a community-engaged historian, and I am actively seeking out those roles. And I will enjoy those jobs.

As it becomes clearer that I will likely leave the academy after my postdoc, I wonder what happens to these committments I've made to community. For example, do I pass up opportunities to expand and fund @TBPhotoProject if I don't know where I'll be professionally in a year?

If I leave academia, how do I explain to TB hospital survivors & families that the project will not continue and I will no longer be doing the work that I said I was doing? I don't want to be another non-Indigenous scholar who leaves a bad taste in their mouths.

How do other community-engaged scholars who leave academia navigate these issues? I mean, it's more than 'issues' - it's people. How do you (professionally, anyways) walk away from the people?