The Public Professor: How to Use Your Research to Change the World

Offers scholars essential advice on bringing their work into the public eye

The work of academics can matter and be influential on a public level, but the path to becoming a public intellectual, influential policy advisor, valued community resource or go-to person on an issue is not one that most scholars are trained for. The Public Professor offers scholars ways to use their ideas, research and knowledge to change the world. The book gives practical strategies for scholars to become more engaged with the public on a variety of fronts: online, in print, at council hearings, even with national legislation.

Lee Badgett, a veteran policy analyst and public intellectual with over 25 years of experience connecting cutting edge research with policymakers and the public, offers clear and practical advice to scholars looking to engage with the world outside of academia. She shows scholars how to see the big picture, master communicating with new audiences, and build strategic professional networks.

Learn how to find and develop relationships with the people who can take your research and ideas into places scholars rarely go, and who can get you into Congressional hearings, on NPR, or into the pages of The New York Times. Turn your knowledge into clear and compelling messages to use in interviews, blog posts, tweets and op-eds. Written for both new and experienced scholars and drawing on examples and advice from the lives of influential academics, the book provides the skills, resources, and tools to put ideas into action.

M. V. Lee Badgett is Professor of Economics and director of the Center for Public Policy & Administration at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and also serves as research director of the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy at UCLA School of Law. She is the author of Money, Myths, and Change: The Economic Lives of Lesbians and Gay Men and co-editor of Sexual Orientation Discrimination: An International Perspective.