Artwork: Peggy Bacon, Lingering Memories, 1954. Open Access, The Met Collection.
The start of a new year always feels like a little miracle. The calendar flips, and somehow the past is behind us, and the future is, for a moment, full of possibility. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to carry forward into 2026.
As a scholar, I’ve spent years chasing ideas: patterns in the way organizations communicate, the stories people tell, and the ways culture and commerce collide. It’s easy to feel like I spend more time with theories than with the world itself. But then I remember why I do this work: because ideas matter. Because how we tell stories, and whose stories get told, shapes the world we live in.
This year, I want to do more than chase questions. I want to linger with them. To explore not just what’s publishable, but what’s meaningful. To listen harder, write clearer, and push myself to make my research, my teaching, and my writing feel alive in the world. Not just on the page.
I also want to hold space for the messiness. For the doubts. For the days when the work is slow, or frustrating, or impossible to measure. Those are the days when I learn the most.
So here’s to 2026. May it be a year to explore ideas, but also to slow down with them, let them surprise us, and let them find their way into the world in ways that matter.