In this paper, we draw on our personal experiences with the perpetuating gender bias in (early-career) academia, more specifically within geography. We develop two main arguments. First, we argue that everyday academic practices stand in sharp contrast with the critical content geography, as a discipline, aims to study and teachincluding its feminist, anti-colonial, and queer understandings. Strikingly, geography as a field does not seem able to apply its academic insights into its internal organization. Indeed, everyday academic practices within geography reproduce structural gendered inequalities. Consequently, geography reproduces the historical 'maleness' of the discipline, both in terms of who embodies it and through the methods and topics it focuses on. Second, we reflect on the strategies we develop to denounce and alter the unjust practices we are confronted with. Yet, these strategies reveal the double bind early career women face, as these very strategies may risk to undermine one's own precarious position, or to give the skewed impression of reproducing the male, disembodied ideal we are fighting.

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This paper aims to deepen the conversation about the potential relevance and importance of including reflection on the desire and sexuality of the researcher in research outputs. We critically scrutinise the exceptionalisation of sexual(ised) interactions in research: why is sexual(ised) contact between researchers and participants considered unethical or problematic, and what are the consequences of the avoidance of-and/or the (self-)censorship with regard to discussing-intimacy in the field? This discussion leads us to argue for an alternative ethical approach than that prescribed by institutional ethical protocols. The ethical approach that we envision is based on the premise that knowledge production never occurs apart from our bodies and that a research relationship is not fundamentally different from any other human relationship. What we propose is a relational research ethics that creates space for discussing openly and in dialogue with others the (potential) consequences of our actions as researchers/human beings within relationships of shifting power asymmetry.

Understanding human geography's development requires looking beyond high‐profile academic journals. Alternative publication circuits are spaces of experimentation and play an important role in the discipline's intergenerational reproduction. This paper narrates the 35‐year trajectory of AGORA Magazine, a Dutch–Flemish popular‐scientific early‐career publication focusing on a broad array of socio‐spatial issues. Uncovering AGORA's history guided by a network analysis of co‐occurring authors, we develop two main arguments. First, the affiliation network extracted from AGORA's archive separates the magazine's history into five eras. These periods provide a window to understand the transformations of Dutch and Flemish human geography and related disciplines during the past decades, critically reflecting the zeitgeist of research topics, approaches and ideologies. Second, we probe the value of AGORA as nursery institution for early‐career scholars, establishing myriad inter‐university and transnational connections. We conclude by assessing the value of ‘second league’ native‐language publications in the context of ongoing internationalization.