Kimele Persaud is an Assistant Professor at Rutgers University and a long-serving Digital Associate Editor (DAE; pictured below). Kimele has decided to leave the Digital Content team, much to my chagrin. This post is an interview about her time as a DAE.
Having been familiar with her writings, I first met Kimele in real life at Psychonomic Society’s 60th Annual Meeting in Montréal, Québec, Canada. We were both serving on the Digital Content team, with me being very new to the role of DAE. We introduced ourselves at the Digital Content Team’s poster, and Kimele was so warm and immediately likeable. These are some of the attributes that came across in her writings for the Psychonomic Society.
The main role of a DAE is to cover research recently published in one of the Psychonomic Society’s seven journals. Often we cover research unrelated to our own research, and some of it can be quite challenging to cover for any number of reasons. Kimele’s posts seemed to always be written with ease.
As Digital Content Editor, one role is to edit the DAE’s posts. A stand-out exchange is when Kimele sent me a draft, apologizing for being late and informing me that she had just had a baby. R E S P E C T.
It’s been an utter delight to work with her, and I will very much miss not having her as part of our team. Without further ado, here’s our interview:
Mickes: Thanks for doing this interview with me, Kimele. You have been a Digital Associate Editor for longer than I’ve been part of the Digital Content team. You started when you were a graduate student and left assistant professor.
How long did you serve as an Associate Editor?
Persaud: I’ve been a DAE since March 2017, so a couple of months shy of five years!
Mickes: The former Digital Content Editor, Stephan Lewandowsky, wrote a piece welcoming you to the Digital Content team in 2017. I completely forgot you that once studied nursing, performed liturgical dance at church, and wrote Christian romance novels! I hope you still have time for activities outside of academia, especially with your new position as Assistant Professor and as your family grows.
What do you see as the primary role of a Digital Associate Editor?
Persaud: I think the primary role of the Digital Associate Editor is to find creative ways to make recent research in the psychological sciences more relatable and accessible to all members of our community.
DAEs call attention to aspects of the science that we care about, and to the people doing the science. For example, during the height of the pandemic, we started drafting blog posts calling attention to the plight of early-career cognitive scientists resulting from the pandemic. We interviewed a few early career researchers to detail the challenges and concerns the pandemic raised. This process and its reception on Twitter highlighted the fact that not only does the cognitive science community conduct fascinating research, but that the community is deeply caring, supportive and willing to help. This aspect, although less talked about, is also an important message that a DAE can be instrumental in sharing with the world — psychological science is fun and relatable and we care!
Mickes: I enjoyed those interviews and agree that supporting each other is essential.
Do you have any idea how many posts you have written in that role?
Persaud: Sheesh…I have no idea! Including the interviews, I would guess somewhere between 30-35 posts.
Mickes: Readers can find some of your posts here.
Do you have a paper and/or post that stands out among all of the papers/posts?
Persaud: Hmm…I think the post that stands out to me at this moment is probably one of the earliest posts I ever wrote. There’s something about the end that makes you think about where it all began.
The post was called “Fuhgeddaboudit” if you can: When remembering may help you forget about a bad date. It covered a paper on directed forgetting and talked about how it’s not always easy to forget certain aspects of studied events, even when we are instructed to do so. However, our best chance of forgetting those details is to try and remember other aspects of the episodic event. This post stood out to me because it was the first time I challenged myself to talk about science in a way that the average person could understand. While many people are unfamiliar with the concept of “inattentional forgetting,” we are all (or most of us) familiar with what it’s like to want to forget a bad date! So this post sought to build on the common ground that many of us share, to make the scientific findings relatable and easy to understand.
This process of making science relatable now informs how I teach my students, train my mentees, and in some ways, it underlies my own research!
Mickes: Incredible. My style of communication and teaching has also changed due to being on the Digital Content team.
Do you have any advice for prospective Digital Associate Editors?
Persaud: My advice to any prospective DAE is to be creative and have fun with your posts! Drafting digital content posts is one of those rare opportunities to make science relatable, fun, and funny! You can talk about how complex concepts of cognition relate to your favorite TV show or provide a prescription for forgetting a bad date (Fuhgeddaboudit!). Take advantage of the chance to be clever or witty, funny (or not funny), inspirational or cheesy, all while making research in the psychological sciences understandable for everyone!
Mickes: That’s solid advice; posts that were fun to write are fun to read.
Can you think of anything else you want to say about your time as a DAE?
Persaud: I just want to say that I had a fantastic time in my tenure as a DAE! I had two great editors and a bevy of colleagues who wrote really interesting posts. Overall it has been a pleasure to serve as a DAE!
Mickes: Thank you, Kimele! We are so glad you enjoyed the role! The Psychonomic Society community will miss your posts, so if you ever have a hankering to write one, you know how to find me. See you at the next Annual Meeting.