Welcoming Six New Postdoctoral Scholars
This summer, the Center was excited to welcome six new postdoctoral scholars! Learn more about the newest members of our community in the short scholar spotlights below.
What led you from chemical engineering at an oil corporation to anthropology?
My life experiences led me to questions of social justice and how we created this world we live in. It eventually became evident that there was a limit to working ‘within the system’ [at ExxonMobile]. I wanted to better understand ‘the system’ so I decided to go back to school full-time and study anthropology.
What will you be working on at Columbia?
I’ll be teaching an interdisciplinary graduate course, Seminar in Race, Climate Change, and Environmental Justice, and will start a new research project tentatively focused on the scientific and social aspects of waterways.
What is your favorite museum or national park?
I recently went to Big Bend National Park in west Texas, and it was spectacular. Hot but beautiful and very interesting geology. Apparently it used to be a site for mining quicksilver (mercury). But my favorite has to be El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico.
Read Hadeel's bio for more information.
What does “co-production of knowledge” mean to you?
Co-production of knowledge means an active and political resistance against colonial and extractive practices of knowledge production upon which science is built. It’s about attempting to confront and change the existing regimes within knowledge systems while acknowledging the consequent creation of another regime, and monitoring its materialization.
What will you be working on at Columbia?
I will be working on four projects, but the main focus will be thinking through the ethical, technical, and economic arrangements within co-production of knowledge, and learning from/with peers how this can be done better. My other work considers the political consequences of single-use plastics, the population distribution of the black-billed parrot, and gathering data on microclimates.
Any book you’d recommend this summer?
I'm going to recommend Nausea - a novel by Jean Paul Sartre. In the past two and a half years, society has shown us its raw, fleshy, underbelly, disgusting many of us to the brink of skin-crawling, rage tears. The language used in Nausea really helped me to see the shape of this disgust and understand how it is located both deep within and distinctly outside of me.
Read Lydia's bio for more information.
What led you from studying law to learning vision science?
Alongside teaching law at [the University of] Oxford, I taught philosophy at University College London, where I began to question the mechanisms that [Johannes] Kepler and [René] Descartes used to explain 3D vision. This formed the basis of my vision science PhD, where I successfully challenged these mechanisms using experiments.
What will you be working on at Columbia?
I recently organized a Royal Society meeting on New Approaches to 3D Vision, where I argued for a new two-stage theory of 3D vision. The focus of my work at Columbia will be developing deep learning models of this new two-stage theory that I can test against participant behavior and fMRI data.
Any podcast you’d recommend this summer?
The Psychonomic Society has a wonderful podcast series called “All Things Cognition,” which I highly recommend. I had an opportunity to discuss my own work in an episode entitled “Knocking a longstanding theory of distance perception.”
Read Paul's bio for more information.
How do errors drive inquiry?
Errors often sit at the heart of uncertainty. Researchers sometimes ‘leave room for error’ other times, what counts as an 'error’ reveals more about what is, at a given point in time, excluded in research. An important corollary here is that what is judged as ‘noise’ is historically and socially determined within empirical practices. Knowing what can go wrong – including what counts as wrong and the possibilities for it – are just as telling in experimentation as what works.
What will you be working on at Columbia?
My project aims to develop a philosophical and scientific account of behavior in neuroscience. My long-term goals are to answer what should count as behavior in the first place and how neuroscientists can better translate their scientific findings. I draw from history, philosophy, and my previous scholarship on the role of lived experience in sleep neuroscience.
Any podcast you’d recommend this summer?
For years now I have been enjoying Brain Inspired with Paul Middlebrooks. I recommend episodes 72 or 114 if you’re wondering what philosophy can contribute to neuroscience. I’ve also been listening to the Joy of Wh(Y) with Steven Strogatz, which came out this year. “Why Do We Die Without Sleep?” is a wonderful episode.
Read Nedah's bio for more information.
What does “climate humanities” mean to you?
“Climate humanities” offer pathways to critically engage the world around us, expand capacities for connection and solidarity, and envision comprehensive forms of justice. Understanding contemporary inequalities requires an analysis of the systems that have created the climate crisis. The climate humanities provide space for this analysis as well as for reimagining what our social, political, and economic systems could be in the future.
What will you be working on at Columbia?
I’ll be teaching a few classes at Columbia, which will use social science and humanities perspectives to examine the colonial origins of the climate crisis, and to explore new genres in research and art that focus on climate change and social justice. I’m also working on a book based on my ethnographic fieldwork on climate, weather, and meteorology in Bangladesh.
Any book you’d recommend this summer?
I highly recommend Dr. Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò’s book Reconsidering Reparations (2022). He makes the case for reparations as a worldmaking project, a way of redistributing resources on a global scale and thereby dislodging the entrenched harms of our current systems. Climate justice is central to his argument. I also recommend the Climate Museum. It’s based in NYC and features innovative programming, with a mission of inspiring collective action on climate.
Read Dilshanie's bio for more information.
What does “co-production of knowledge” mean to you?
The co-production of knowledge means so many things to me. Yet at its core, to me, it broadly means collaborations that span all levels of society by bringing together diverse ways of seeing and being in the world in pursuit of a better future for everyone.
What will you be working on at Columbia?
My work will focus on the co-production of knowledge for climate-related research and practice. This includes work at Columbia and beyond, such as exploring good ethical practices in knowledge co-production and seeing how photography can help co-produce knowledge about climate change with Indigenous Knowledge Holders in the Arctic.
What is your favorite museum or national park?
It's pretty fitting that someone working on the co-production of knowledge can't pick just one national park! My two favorite parks so far are White Sands National Park (New Mexico) and George Washington Carver National Monument (Missouri).
Read Michael's bio for more information.