Murmurations, an open access scholarly journal on emergence, equity, and education, launched today. It works towards "systemic social equity in education by giving visibility to the views that are normally hidden," and I'm honored to be part of the inaugural issue -- and to finally have a more formally published version of my "What is Engineering" comic from 2011. The PDF version that link points to has full image descriptions inline*.
This comic (or "graphic essay," if you want to sound fancier... but really, comic) is one of the more accidentally popular things I've made since the long blog post in which it first appears. As of 2018, it's been viewed 7.8k times, assigned as homework to students in classrooms I've never seen, made surprise appearances in South Africa (when my advisor Robin Adams met another researcher who asked if I was her student, then pulled a copy of the comic from their bag), and... wow.
You can view the full inaugural issue now -- Murmurations itself is an experiment as to what journals, the review process, and many other things might be. For instance, what if authors stated their positionality at the beginning of each piece? I'd never previously seen someone outwardly declare they were cisgender in a piece that wasn't centered around gender identity; it's refreshing to declare things typically taken for granted (I'm still waiting for my colleagues to "out" themselves as hearing and abled, whereas I'm often expected to walk around proclaiming that I'm Deaf).
What if "reviewer" (we call them "reflectors") comments and dialogues on earlier revisions of a piece could be viewed along with the published version? What if the piece could continue to evolve after publication? This is what I'm hoping for mine; it was done by a much younger and less trained version of myself, and I would love to do a substantial revision and re-drawing based on the feedback and reflections of others, so please chime in!
Side comment: it is a strange feeling to look at page proofs of my writing every time it happens; the words look so much more polished, formal, and final than they ever felt during the writing process. Layout is powerful.