#PHDstory | Martina Riberto

Martina Riberto
PhD student
in Cognitive Neuroscience and Experimental Psychology

What is your main research topic?

I am a PhD student in Cognitive Neuroscience and Experimental Psychology. I am interested in how our brain elaborates emotional events and how we make judgments about them. In particular, my PhD project aims at investigating how our brain functions when we judge the similarity between emotional experiences in mentally healthy people.

What do you mean with emotional events?

Events that have an emotional impact in someone’s life. For example, passing an important exam is an emotional event, brushing your teeth is a non-emotional event.

Which approach do you use? Is this a new approach?

This is a new topic. No one in the past has investigated the judgement of similarity between emotional events, but only between neutral or non-emotional events. And yes, we use a new approach, as we want to combine different techniques, such as Functional Resonance Magnetic Imaging (FMRI), and Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS). FMRI allows us to see which areas of the brain activate during an action, while the TMS allows us to identify which of those areas are directly involved in that action. These are not-invasive research methods that allow to explore in vivo the functioning of brain. That means we will be studying the functioning of the brain in real time, when the brain is actually functioning.

You also collaborate with other researchers?

Yes. My PhD project was developed in collaboration with the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. I will move there this September and I will stay there for 2 years. So, yes, it is an international collaboration.

What motivated you to enter this field of study?

I’ve always been very interested in emotions, at first because I am a very emotional and passionate person, so I want to understand where these aspects come from. Then, I think that perceiving and elaborating emotions is something that makes human beings unique species. I mean, animals perceive emotion as well, but I think emotions are the core of human life story. And finally, it’s very interesting from a clinical perspective: I am a clinical psychologist, and most of psychiatry/psychological disorders I’ve worked with when I was in Italy, in San Raffaele Hospital, involved emotional disturbances, and I want to do my best to try to also solve their problem, or at least help those patients to cope better with their disorder.

What makes you get out of bed in the morning? What inspires you?

This is a very interesting question. At first it is, of course, the passion for my job. But mainly it is my curiosity and my sense of adventure. With this I mean that this PhD is not only a chance to grow in terms of professional experience, but it is an adventure that started when I moved to Manchester, will continue when I move to Israel this September, and will end when I am back here in Manchester again. So, all this travelling is a way to challenge myself, day after day, and I will have the opportunity to see how I will cope with living in different places, meeting people from different cultures. In summary, how will I react towards all these experiences that are awaiting me. This really gets me going.

To you, what would it mean to be successful?

From a professional point of view, being successful for me is having the opportunity or being lucky enough to have a job that you really love in a nice, friendly, non-stressful environment. From a personal point of view, it is really simple in my opinion; being loved by someone that you love as well.

Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

Ahha, maybe living in Tenerife with my sister. I am only joking. I don’t know, actually. It depends on what the future will offer me. Right now, I really like this job, I like doing research and I feel that it also fits with me and my personality. So maybe, in 10 years I’ll be a lecturer trying to to enrich my students with my knowledge and experiences, and I will be enriched as well from their experiences, reasoning and thinking … a bidirectional enrichment, basically. But I am not sure, that’s all I can tell. Many things can change, right?

What makes life meaningful?

Oh, this is very easy for me. Human relationships. Any kind of relationship. Choose one, it is essential for a meaningful life.

What kind of society do you dream of?

I dream of a more spiritual society. I mean a society where money, power and material things play a less important role than now, where people don’t waste their time posting a fake life on social media, or struggling for the material aspects of life, but rather try to enrich their soul and mind. Utopia!

Do you have a personal dream?

Yes, it’s very simple actually, maybe banal but it’s my dream… I want to have a happy and healthy family. The rest will be a consequence of it.

If you could, what would you tell your younger self?

Don’t fight against yourself. Freely be what you are!

If you could, what would you tell your future self?

Remember that you’re capable of things you didn’t even know were possible.

Conversation by:
Marianna Loizzi

“I was really impressed by the passion that Martina had while describing her PhD topic, and how the fact that she is a very emotional person made her very interested in study human emotion at the point she is doing a Ph.D. on them. It really makes me think how our personalities can define our passions and our carries.”

 

Conversation by:
Marianna Loizzi

“I was really impressed by the passion that Martina had while describing her PhD topic, and how the fact that she is a very emotional person made her very interested in study human emotion at the point she is doing a Ph.D. on them. It really makes me think how our personalities can define our passions and our carries.”

#PHDstory | Michele Gabriele

Michele Gabriele
SEMM PhD Student
European Institute of Oncology, Milan

What do you do your PhD in and what is your main research topic?

I work in Giuseppe Testa’s laboratory, in Milan. My PhD project is about disease modelling and epigenetics, which means that I study how neurodevelopmental syndromes and cancer occur, when the mechanisms that regulate where and when genes are expressed are altered. More specifically, I currently study the molecular basis of Kabuki syndrome and Gabriele-deVries syndrome using patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC), which are then differentiated in cell types affected in these diseases, such as neurons. In parallel, I study how the same mutations causative of Kabuki syndrome, when occurring in adults, are responsible for many tumors.

Can you explain to us what are Kabuki syndrome and Gabriele-deVries syndrome?

Kabuki and Gabriele-deVries syndromes are both genetic neurodevelopmental diseases caused by mutations in genes involved in the control of gene regulation. The individuals affected by these syndromes are affected by intellectual disabilities, facial abnormalities, neurological symptoms, and, often, several other systemic problems.

How did you get interested in this particular topic?

When I was in university I got fascinated by the “developmental biology” class, which was about answering the question: “how is it possible that cells of an organism “know” what to become if they all arise from the very same cell and have the same genome?” The topic of gene regulation is exactly the answer to this question and, when altered, gives rise to many pathologies. So, I became more interested in this topic to better understand these mechanisms and to create knowledge that could be used to help people and society.

Tell me more about it.

I was dreaming about becoming a scientist since I was a child when I first watched Jurassic Park. I was Mr. DNA and the scientists that were working there, and I basically decided I wanted to do something similar but more useful! ? I am a very curious person full of enthusiasm for life and I don’t really know how to get bored.

Is yours going to be a new approach?

What I currently do in the PhD project is the latest approach to study human diseases. What I hope is that, in the future, I will develop new effective and easily reproducible approaches that will be adopted widely to help scientific advancement.

Do you also collaborate with other research groups?

I believe that nowadays collaborations are the new and good way to do science. We must let go of the idea of the genius scientist who discovers a new thing by himself. We reached a level of knowledge in which problems need to be addressed in a multidisciplinary approach and often by combining the expertise of several research groups. For example, I collaborate with Nael Nadif Kasri’s team, who has a strong electrophysiology background, and with the geneticist Bert de Vries’s team, with whom we discovered a new neurodevelopmental disorder.

What motivated you to enter this field of study?

I have always been fascinated by neuroscience, since the brain is the most fascinating organ. By studying its diseases, I contribute to give a better understanding of it, to help and to solve problems. For gene regulation is the same; it influences everything, and we still need to understand a lot of fine regulation mechanisms.

What makes you get out of bed in the morning? What inspires you?

I guess everybody knows that the PhD salary is not that great, in every part of the world. I really think that science is a vocation, you need to be curious and love this kind of work. I think I am also lucky that I have a lot of great colleagues, with whom I enjoy my free time and with whom I can have productive conversations that lead to new ideas to be tested. I am mostly inspired by some scientists, who, with their passion and attitude of questioning, had a great impact on our current way of thinking and knowledge. Few examples are Francis Crick and Jared Diamond.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

In 5 years, I hope I will have finished my post-doc studies (the career step after the PhD), and be starting my own laboratory. I want to keep all the relationships with all the people I met so far, though. Moreover, among my long and immediate term, I hope to transmit my enthusiasm to the new generations, both in science and out of academia. Therefore, I hope I will manage to do some good science communication.

What makes life meaningful?

Eheh, one of the biggest questions that I think I don’t have a universal answer for. For sure, enjoying everything you do is the key to having a meaningful life. Moreover, I think that it is important to share! Everything becomes more rewarding if you share experiences, moments, everything! Trying not to waste time in the distractions that mislead us and make us waste our time.

What does the world need the most right now in your opinion? What is your dream society?

Again, I think we need to share more and reduce waste and human impact. The world really needs us to stop destroying it and this is linked with my dream society, in which everybody has a good education, that leads to independent thinking, to awareness, and to unity. In my dream society, everybody respects nature and the environment, and we focus on issues that unite people and not divide us.

What does science need the most right now in your opinion?

What we need now is a complete revolution of the publishing and the financial system. Currently, the publishing system is based on peer-revision, which means that anonymous peers, or experts, on the field read your paper and review and criticize your work, to check that everything is correct. This often times doesn’t work in the way it is supposed to work and unpleasant things happen. One signal of change is that several journals have recently started to publish all the review email exchange, to make everything clearer for everybody.

The current publishing system is strictly related to the funding system. Indeed, most funding agencies demand a publishing track record in prestigious journals, and this often creates a vicious circle that fuels the fact that who has money will win more money and who has no money will not probably win new grants because they’re not able to publish. Anonymizing grant applications is another way to evaluate ideas and to give the possibility to non-prestigious teams to win big grants as well. Now, in a scientific world that has become more accessible and crowded when compared to 30 years ago, the combination of these two things creates a lot of negative competition, and a “bad science” behavior caused by the “publish or perish” attitude.

Conversation by:
Marianna Loizzi

“Michele Gabriele impressed me with his passion about science which was always with him, since he was a child. His view of the publishing system is different but also realistic, a good push to critical thinking about the system itself.”

Learn more about Michele's work:
linkedin.com/michele-gabriele

 

Conversation by:
Marianna Loizzi

“Michele Gabriele impressed me with his passion about science which was always with him, since he was a child. His view of the publishing system is different but also realistic, a good push to critical thinking about the system itself.”

#PHDstory | Noemi Alfieri

Noemi Alfieri
PhD in Portuguese Studies

1. What do you do your PhD in and what is your main research topic?

I’m doing my PhD in Portuguese Studies, with a focus on Book History and African Literatures written in Portuguese. I’m trying to understand more about the relationship between identity and conflict, and its manifestations in the literary production. That’s why I’m researching about literature written in Portuguese (no matter if it’s poetry, novel or short story) between 1961 and 1974, the years of the War that took place between the Portuguese fascist regime and the Liberation Movements of Portugal’s former colonies: Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau, and then Cape Verde and São Tomé e Príncipe, that were not directly involved in the war, but that still fought for their independence and right to self-determination.

2. How did you get interested in this particular topic? What motivated you to enter this field of study?

I have always been surrounded by books. My grandmother was a teacher with a huge passion for literature and history. I spent several days of my childhood looking at the shelves full of books that surrounded every single part of her house and I remember I was fascinated by them like if they were hiding secrets. They were some kind of extemporal entity living in the house that I could touch just if authorized. It’s a passion she and my grandfather forwarded to their son and nephews. I’ve always loved books that tell you something about the daily life of regular people, that give visibility to who’s invisible and voice to those who haven’t got it or who struggle. A few years ago, I red a book by one of the most famous Angolan contemporary writers: Mayombe, by Pepetela. It was just published in 1980, but written in the early 70’s, when the writer was involved in the guerrilla against the colonial regime. The book is politic and needs to be read with the consciousness that there are several elements of a propaganda book, but still, Pepetela describes the feelings, the fears, the struggle of people of different ethnic groups fighting for their right to decide about their future. I began to read more about this war: how did it start? Which were the movements there were leading it? What Angolan ethnic groups were involved? Which were the common elements these heterogeneous groups were using to rebuild a shared identity? These were the main questions that led me to read the work of other writers, not just from Angola, but also from the other countries I mentioned above.

3. Tell me more about it.

When the war in Angola started, on the 4th of February 1961, the social situation was quite complicated. It was the late 50’s and the number of Portuguese settlers in the country had increased exponentially, while most of the African countries were achieving their independence from the European powers. There was a renewed consciousness of the need of a real approximation to the rest of Africa, a strong will of independence or increased autonomy, at the same time as part of the population was fighting the Estado Novo regime of Salazar, the colonial condition, and the racial discrimination. Languages such as Umbundu, Kimbundu, Ronga, Creole, were used in daily life and they show up in the written production. In the former Portuguese colonies, literature was a way of consolidating a new national identity: due to censorship and to the self-censorship, poetry was used to say, in an encoded way, what could not be said otherwise. Novels and short stories started to deal with social problems and with a reality that was really far away from the one shown on the propagandas of the regime.

4. Is yours going to be a new approach?

I hope so. What I’m trying to do is to have and interdisciplinary approach, using Social History, Political History and, obviously, Literature, that is my field and the main focus of my research. I think it is important to read books and to enjoy them just as literature, but then, they’re a relevant resource that can give us several information about a historical period, the mindset of a certain group of people, the way languages interacted. Using literature as sources, we always must be conscient that it’s a representation of a certain view and conception of the reality and not the reality itself, that a narration is a social construction and, at the same time, an artistic invention. We cannot just take a literary excerpt, or a written text, an say the context it represents reflects perfectly what was happening at the time. So, my challenge is to try to go deep into the contradictions that emerge from literary texts and to try to deconstruct narratives.

5. Do you also collaborate with other research groups? If so, tell me about it.

I do. I’m part of the group Leitura e Formas de escrita (that is, Reading and the Forms of Writing) of CHAM – Centre for the Humanities of Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal. The group studies the forms of writing, their meaning and their usage, from old manuscripts to digital, as well as the forms of reading and the agent involved in these processes.

6. What makes you get out of bed in the morning? What inspires you?

The sun, nature, books, and the people I love.

7. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

I try not to make long-term plans. Expectations kill creativity.

8. What makes life meaningful?

Again, a walk in the woods, the breeze of the wind by the sea, hiking a mountain, a sunset and a sunrise, contact with animals and time spent with the people you love. Visiting new places, seeing different traditions, speaking to people from different parts of the world. I tend to appreciate more and more simple things in the frenetic times we are living.

9. What does the world need the most right now, in your opinion? What is your dream society?

I would definitely say: communication between humans, contact with animals and nature, respect of the environment and real use of renewable resources. We live in a world of migrations, war for the resources and climate change. It’s urgent to fight the intolerance to other cultures as, whether people like it or not, we’ll live in increasingly multicultural societies. So, people need to read, to speak with people from different cultures and countries, to question their way of leaving. The West should question its position, and last but not least, even if we have the tendency to forget it, humans are animals and we need contact with other animals as much as we need an environment to live in. We – especially the so-called West, that uses most of the resources – have been knowing for decades our way of living is not sustainable and we are now paying the bill, but so is the environment that feeds us and the animals that get extinguished because of the disappearance of this very environment.

My dream society is one in which no people die of hunger, lack of medicines, cold. Where all the children can go to school and receive a basic education. It is a society in which everybody has the power to speak freely, were demanding the right to have a voice is a pride and not a shame. It’s a society in which people don’t work fourteen hours a day and have time to spend with their children, their family, to join friends, dance, cultivate traditions.

10. What does science need the most right now, in your opinion?

Science needs to be inclusive, to give space to women, to get rid of its old forms and to get to the society. Society needs science communication, has the right to know its results, and science needs the feedback of society to understand its needs and to find new research strategies. In one word, science needs to leave the golden cage of the academy and get to the people. The contact between specialists is important and stimulating, but it’s not enough.

Conversation by:
Marianna Loizzi

“It was very interesting interviewing Noemi, and learn a lot about the Angola’s History and how it influenced the literature. And I am impressed by the fact she does her research in 3 different languages! I hope you will enjoy it too.”

Learn more about Noemi's work:
linkedin.com/noemi-alfieri

 

Conversation by:
Marianna Loizzi

“It was very interesting interviewing Noemi, and learn a lot about the Angola’s History and how it influenced the literature. And I am impressed by the fact she does her research in 3 different languages! I hope you will enjoy it too.”

Clarissa Rios Rojas

Clarissa Rios Rojas
Molecular biologist, policymaking advisor
Biography:

Scientist who after finishing her bachelor in Biology in Peru (UNMSM) decided to look for new avenues of professional development. She did exchange studies in Finland at the University of Turku, got her master in Biomedicine at Karolinska Institutet University in Sweden, worked in a pharmaceutical company in Germany and later got a PhD in Molecular Biology in Australia at the University of Queensland.

While finishing the PhD, she started to feel the urge to contribute to the world with something else than only her scientific work at the laboratory. This feeling pushed her to create an organization called Ekpa’palek that empowers Latin-American young professionals through different free mentorship programs that align with the Sustainable Development Goals of reduction of inequalities, gender equality and education.

Encouraged by the impact these programs had on young professionals, she discovered the need for creating new local, regional, and international policies that could help to tackle global issues. Motivated by this, she applied and was selected to participate in numerous events (international conferences, forums, and workshops) in science policy, citizen engagement in policy relevant to science & innovation, science diplomacy, open science & education, science outreach and global governance in different countries (Argentina, Jordan, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Canada, India, Chile, Germany, Thailand and Morocco).

In 2017, she worked at the Agency for Environmental Assessment and Enforcement (OEFA) from the Ministry of Environment in Peru and since May 2018, she works at the EU Science Hub, also known as the Joint Research Center from the European Commission’s science and knowledge service where she provides scientific advice and support to EU policy. Also, as a member of the Global Young Academy, she works on initiatives related to science outreach, women empowerment and science advise.

Learn more about Clarissa's work:
http://www.ekpapalek.com
Connect with Clarissa:
facebook.com/cla.risa.54 twitter.com/Clarissajaz linkedin.com/clarissariosrojas instagram/being_a_scientist_is_cool
Empowering Latinos and filling the gap between science and society

What is the social purpose of science today? How are ethics and research linked in the modern world? What are the policies that keep scientific and social paths going in the same direction? Clarissa Rios answers these questions from her position as a molecular Biologist and policy maker at the European Commission, deriving from her experience in both the social and scientific aspects of research the core values of the purpose of science in favor of the smaller communities.

Founder of Ekpa’palek, an organization destined to offer academic help to Latin American students who want to broaden their horizons and stock up on the experience and advice from other professionals before entering their own fields, Clarissa expands on the need for science to hold a truly useful track of investment to help indigenous communities and developing countries through scientific research and the encouragement of young professionals to assist in these projects. The values of growth and development through inclusion and action make Ekpa’palek a unique vision for the young professionals who will contribute to wholesome communities, richer societies and a brighter future.

Watch the trailer:
Watch the video:
Listen to the Audiofile here:
Read the transcript of Clarissa Rios Rojas's Video here ◂

Nerina: Thank you, Clarissa, for joining me. Could you please introduce yourself?

Clarissa Rios: I am Clarissa Ríos Rojas, form Peru. I am a molecular biologist, and now I’m working in the interface of science and policy making, the European Commission in Italy and also, I’m the founder and director of Ekpa’palek, which is an organization that empowers Latin-American professionals.

Nerina: Could you tell us a little bit more about your position and your work right now?

Clarissa Rios: My project right now at the European Commission is to write recommendations for citizen engagement initiatives in the topic of social and ethical aspects of emerging technology, in this case, genomics and gene editing, and so on. So, for what I have found on my research so far, is that technology goes faster than policies, and sometimes it’s really hard to keep track of everything that is happening, and to implement the laws and the policies that need to be implemented in order to regulate science, as well.

So science, as we now, is research and innovation, but sometimes it goes to the next steps and becomes a start-up or a company that offers services that can be used for different reasons and by different types of people. I have seen right now that there are, for example, genetic testing companies offering a lot of ancestry testing and health testing, so it would be good to know who’s regulating these companies; are really experts the ones who are providing the information about your genes? What happens with your DNA once it is stored in their company? Is it in store forever or is it sold to another company? Can they trace it was your DNA?

These are things that are happening right now, and people don’t really know much about it. For example, genomics is also working at the interface with blockchain, so now we are having cryptocurrecy that is based on selling your DNA data, so what does that represent for business and society? Again, we have those ethical questions, but does it really help big companies to have more genetic data to have a better analysis of which diseases can come from different types of genes? There are many things that have to be evaluated, but it’s important to citizens to know what is happening, where it’s happening, and what is going to happen in their society if they accept it, or if they are consumers or become users of it.

Nerina: Why did you decide to take this new challenge?

Clarissa: I think that the in the European Commission, the Joined Research Center is the best place to learn about how scientists can contribute to society in terms of policy making, so I thought that this would be the best place to work and learn and contribute to, and I hope that this will be one of the first steps into a career and to a lot of work; I hope to use science-based evidence to create policies and help policy makers to better understand not only the citizens, but also the science behind every decision.

Nerina: Why is this relevant?

Clarissa: I think that the biggest problem that I see right now is that scientists are doing science just because; just because of curiosity and I now that’s a main drive that many of us had to become scientists, but I think we need to build places or spaces where we as scientists can speak with citizens. We can understand what are their needs, because I have seen during my time as a scientist that there are many projects that really don’t have any implications in solving anything at the moment; it’s just knowledge that is being generated with the hope that in the future is going to be used.

We can relocate not only the money, but the human capital, the PhD students that are being put into these projects, into something that society really needs. I think that we should have a priority table and see what the problems to see how we can fix the first hundred, instead of having fifty thousand projects and giving money to all of them and keep going.

I think that basic research is important, but I also think that basic research should be always tailored into fixing something, or producing some kind of technology. Without that, I think trust in science will never be achievable because citizens see this, citizens see their taxes are being used in projects that may never be published, that cannot be replicated, or that are not helping anything in their communities and local problems, and that just one side.

I also see that there is a problem with citizens not learning or trying to have some curiosity about science. I think they could interact more with scientists, see what they are doing, visit open days at universities, see where taxes are being used and have an opinion about it and learn from scientists, what they are producing, how they’re doing and use this scientific knowledge in order to make better decisions on the government they’re going to choose, about the political party they are going to vote for, what is this political party focusing on. Is it correct? Is it based on science, which is the most trustful thing that se have at the moment? Of course, it has its pitfalls, but it’s the best thing that we can work with.

The citizens should also think on how to improve science. If they don’t have faith in science, then tell us how we can improve it, how can science and society and citizens work together in order to make science better , achievable for everyone, and open in a way that everyone can understand it, and use it for the best of society and the environment, because sometimes we are just super anthropocentric and thinking about humans, but we are responsible, whether we want it or not, for all the species that are around us, and the ecosystems and the habitats we have, so I think that we should take our citizens’ role a little bit more responsibly.

Nerina: What would you suggest?

Clarissa: I think that’s why I was mentioning before that we should have these spaces where scientists can talk to other scientists, for example, about social science, as I talk about the ethics. I know that during university we have courses on ethics – animal ethics and human ethics -, but I think that we should have also courses with politics in science. Have courses where we bring politicians and scientist to understand how we’re both working together and making things better.

Other courses could be about scientists and citizens, and scientists and society, and create debate between them, answering questions form both sides, and trying to think how we can work together, because as you said, the theory of science in great, but who is doing the science? Us humans, with our imperfections, with our sometimes poor equipment, and with the limited knowledge that we have. I think it’s very important for scientists and citizens to acknowledge that scientists are not perfect; they are humans and make mistakes, and also the equipment and machines that they use make mistakes from time to time, but then having that as a premise to figure what we can do based on that, and then is when all these interactions with all the different groups take place, and then all three groups together can think about how science can be better, how can it have less errors and less mistakes, and how to bring all the traditional knowledge into it, as well as the ethics and the social aspects.

Sometimes we think that the problem has to be fixed by only one expert. That, for example, climate change has to be fixed by an environmentalist or a biologist, when in reality, problems are fixed by everyone. By economists, lawyers, citizens, biologists; it has to be fixed by everyone, because otherwise we are not creating a solution, we are just fixing a little patch, not the whole picture.

Nerina: You just mentioned traditional knowledge, and this is something that very often comes up when speaking with you. Why this interest in aboriginal culture?

Clarissa: Yes, well, my dad is from the jungle. Of course, he is part of an aboriginal community, but I guess that was my first encounter with aboriginal tribes and with people who are part that whole society. Also, when I was working with one of the agencies in the Ministry of Environment in Peru, one part of my job was to try to understand the narratives and how to bring the projects that the government had for these communities, how to make them learn, and how to learn from them what were their needs and priorities, and I think that all these encounters made me realize that they are not heard enough, their voices are not shared enough, their needs and their priorities are not communicated, and sometimes, with friends, I’ve heard them say things like “No, they should evolve like us, like the city people”, and I’ve been hurt by those comments, because I feel like our opinions are too superficial always, not just in these topic, but in many. It’s just something that has not has been thought through, you have not had an encounter with them, so how come you have a conscious and educated opinion about that?

For example, Ekpa’palek is a way to promote indigenous languages. Ekpa’palek comes from the Shiwilu language, form the Amazon in Peru, and it means to teach a little kid to take his first steps. Trying to translate everything in our programs on indigenous communities is a way to make it more accessible.

Nerina: You are the founder of Ekpa’palek. Can you tell us more about this organization?

Clarissa: We are an organization of around 45 to 50 people, and what we do is to offer programs for free to any Latinamerican students that want it. One of them is the professional mentorship, so we connect the students with professionals that are a little bit advanced in their careers so they can guide them, they can talk, they can tell them how to gain certain scholarships, but also about what’s out there. If I am a psychologist, if I am an economist, I want to know what’s happening in Australia, what’s happening in China, so that person can get inside information, so students in Latinamerica can shape their minds thinking about what’s next, and they should be studying now, or working on, or doing an internship with.

The second program is women empowerment. The first year, we were bringing new women from all over to schools; we had five professional women bringing their stories, bringing their pitfalls, the experiences they had been through and how they got where they are now. That worked for one year and then we had to stop it, so now we are focusing more on campaigns on line; we are doing the same, showing new women role models but in a visual way. We have engineers, economists, from different parts of the world that are Latinamerican women, and then they send a three minute video telling how they are there and why they decided on that career.

The third program will be the empowerment of indigenous languages, so basically we want our programs to reach everyone. We have started translating the articles on our blog into Quechua, which is a language that is spoken in Peru and Bolivia, and it’s a official language in Peru as well. Also, we have tree videos in Quechua, as well; we had one of our mentors make theses videos, telling how he went from a little town in the highlands of Peru to do his Master in France, and to study in Lima, Peru, as well. We are trying to promote translating everything that we are producing into different languages, not only Quechua.

Nerina: What motivated you to start this organization?

Clarissa: Well, because when I started my professional path, I was a bachelor student that really wanted to learn and to go more from theory to practice, and that was something that was not happening in Peru in terms of molecular biology. I think my motivation was to learn more, and I could do it with scholarships and people helping me take the next steps, as you mentioned, and then after ten years of doing my master and my PhD I realized that I was not the only one, and that the case that I had ten years ago where I didn’t have money to pursue studies, I didn’t have connections to create opportunities in professional development were still existing in Latin America, and we were at a disadvantage with the rest of the world.

So I thought about what I could do with this tools that I had gathered over the years, and one of them was my network. So I think it was really personal, because it was not that I was trying to fix something that happens somewhere else to some other people, but I was trying to help someone like me at this moment, someone who didn’t have opportunities, didn’t have the network, didn’t have ideas, or someone from outside to talk to and just get inspired.

Nerina: How did you become what you are now?

Clarissa: I studied Biology and Genetics in Peru; I was very interested and curious about science. Then I went to Finland for exchange studies, and I did a Master in Biomedicine and Neuroscience, which I was also completely in love with, specifying different types of neurons in the brain, and then I decided to move to Australia to do my PhD in sex development; how the sperm cells and the egg cells develop.

When I was finishing my PhD was when I decided to create Ekpa’palek, this organization that empowers Latinamerican professionals. And then, looking at the results and the people that we were helping, I started to realize that a nes passion was growing inside myself, and then I decided to leave the lab where I was doing experiments and start to communicate with citizens and policy makers and start to find a way where I could use my scientific background and I could help society in a different way, and that way is creating better policies for everyone. Now it’s in the European Union, but later I hope it will be in Latinamerica and in Peru.

Nerina: What is the most important lesson that you have learned?

Clarissa: I started this project thinking that I would help many people, but I’m being helped as well. I’m learning so much, I’m meeting so many people, we are doing so many nice projects outside Ekpa’palek as well. This has also motivated me to change my career; as I said, I was working in the lab as a scientist, and the Ekpa’palek happened, and then I started to pursue new paths within myself that make me happy, so what I would recommend to anyone is that if you always think that there is a problem and you want to fix it, try to do it with one friend, and it may grow and it may not, but you have the satisfaction to learn from it.

Nerina: What is your vision for Ekpa’palek?

Clarissa: When I created Ekpa’palek, it was only for Latinamericans, but in my wild dreams we have Ekpa’palek Asia and Ekpa’palek Africa interacting with each other. But that is also based on the idea of the «brain drain» – I think that’s what they call it in English -, when professionals and all the talent goes from the south to the north and then never go back, or just a few of them. So I thought it would be very interesting to have a blog of developing countries in the south, exchanging professionals, exchanging knowledge, exchanging what we already know how to do best, and empower each other, because the south also need to keep growing, to keep learning, and it would be really good to create these alliances between universities, student associations, and governments, and think about what are the good things and benefits that can come from it.

Of course, going to the north and having the technology to learn is really good, but I think the next step on that path could be to start doing these collaborations.

Nerina: Is there something you believe we should think more about?

Clarissa: I would just like to point out that we are creating so much technology, and these technologies are mostly created in developed countries, and are mostly created to fix and find solutions for local problems, so that means that the problem that, for example, indigenous communities have will never be solved by the technology that we are creating now, and I think they would benefit so much from that.

Sometimes we are talking about gene editing and blockchain, and how does that benefit indigenous communities? They are people who also have struggles and many local problems that they would like to solve; how good would it be if used these technologies to find solutions for those problems as well? So that would be my contribution, to make people think about technology is being biased towards certain problems, certain “local” problems, and not really towards developing countries and indigenous communities.

Nerina: And what is the relation between science and traditional knowledge, in your opinion?

Clarissa: It has always been known about, this traditional knowledge. Sometimes it is treated with respect, and sometimes it’s treated like it’s not science. It’s very curious that you ask me this, because in my group, one of the projects is about mapping arctic communities, so they are mapping every community that is Finland, Norway, Iceland, U.S, Canada, and besides doing the mapping, they are gathering the information that they have in the terms of climate change. They’re voices about climate change and how that’s impacting them in the first place because they are close to the first places where the impact is being observed, and what they have to say about.

I think that nowadays it is taken more seriously, and I’m glad to see that the European Commission, for example, is also taking them seriously and writing reports about it, having their voices heard and their opinions shared with policy makers and with people in the European Union.

I’ve seen this happening in Europe, but I have not seen it in Latinamerica. However, when I was working at the agency of the Ministry of Environment, I could see that the interaction between the experts, the biologists, the chemists was really open when they were informing them about what was happening, I think the efforts are becoming more and more important, and in order to listen from them as well, not just coming and giving a lecture about what is going to happen and what they need to know, but also empowering them in teaching them how to use equipment to measure pollution, how to analyze data so they can have their own data analyzed. Also, I heard that in Bolivia, if you want to be part of the government, you have to speak one of the indigenous languages, and I think that’s important, because, for example, for these types of jobs you can speak in Spanish and then you have a translator, but how would it be if you could speak to them in Quechua, in Aymara, and hear them, so they also feel more comfortable in sharing their ideas in their own language.

I think languages are a very powerful thing. I am going to learn more about different types of languages because I think that is the way to really go into a deeper connection with someone, especially if you’re working in this field, and understand what they want to see in their environment, what they want to contribute to the government, for example, in terms of analyzing the data, letting them know when they see a case of contamination, on the river, on the cause, etc.

Nerina: Do you have a wish or a dream?

Clarissa: Yes. I really dream sometimes that there is a society that is respectful of everyone, but more than anything, they have empathy. Everyone in this society has empathy that makes them really feel how the other person would feel in every situation, not only in how we interact as friends, but in different geographical parts. How these people may feel in different social classes; how these people must feel, what can I do to help this person. I think empathy should be the key factor in this society that I envision.

I think the society that I dream of in one where there is the feeling of connection and belonging with every single part of this habitat; not only humans, but plants, insects, birds, the rivers – I mean, the water we drink comes from the river -, so I think that connection is missing sometimes. We don’t feel like we belong or that we are part of something bigger that needs us to take care of it and to contribute to keep it going in a healthy way, so I think if that could be spread into all citizens and make them feel responsible for each other, for other species, for the soil, for the river, for the climate, it would be my second wish. That feeling of belonging and connection.

Nerina: What was the most beautiful day, and what was the mist awful one?

Clarissa: I think the most beautiful day for me is just being with my family having lunch together. It is something that I haven’t had for many years as a daily thing. I did a little bit when I finished my PhD; I could go back and leave again for six months back in Peru with my family, so I think my most warm and beautiful feeling is to have just that: my mom, my dad, my brother, now my partner as well. Laughing, talking about what happened during the day, maybe complaining about something that happened at university or at our jobs, just sharing and being together in a peaceful, quiet place.

Maybe the most horrible moment has been when sometimes I feel that I’m in a place where there is just too much horror, too much darkness, that all the good things really don’t compensate for the bad things, and that it’s not a nice world. Sometimes I feel like this world is the hell of someone else, or is the imagination of how hell should be, because I see so many awful things, so much suffering, even though I’m not experiencing it myself. I’m not a someone that has been a sex slave, or someone that has been raped, or someone who wakes up with bombs ten meters from them, but I still feel like it could be me, I feel people don’t deserve to grow in an environment like that; they didn’t ask to be born in this world.

I think those have been the hardest moments in my life; just to be overwhelmed by sorrow, by sadness, and to think that there is really nothing that we can do to change it, I’ve had those times as well. I think activists are always in that twilight, where you think that everything can get better if you do something, but you’re also on the other side where you think that everything is horrible and terrible and too much to take in.

Nerina: And what brings you up?

Clarissa: What brings me up is to see people doing amazing things. Because I’m doing Ekpa’palek, for example, I’m in touch with different organizations and meet people that are always doing something, and I see them and I think that there is hope.

There are a lot of amazing people doing things for animals, for the environment, for other humans, and I thin, Yes, things can change. At some point.

Nerina: What is life about, Clarissa?

Clarissa: I think life is about learning, experiencing all the feelings; sadness is part of and part of what we are as humans. I think we should be grateful that we can experience it, although it’s not a nice thing, but sometimes good things come out of it. Sometimes, not always.

It’s about meeting other people; trying to be, as Maya Angelou said, a rainbow in someone else’s cloud, and just to try and make other people happy, because sometimes you’re sad and the other can make you happy. Sometime the other person is sad and you can make them happy.

It’s just about trying to enjoy what we have. Talking as a biologist, we have theses fabulous senses of touch, smelling, seeing. It’s enjoying theses things that we can give ourselves. About learning more about what’s happening in all parts of the world, to see documentaries about the life of animals and how they interact; it’s absolutely beautiful.

I think those are pleasures that even if you cannot travel, you can see it and sort of experience it from afar, and I those are the things that bring me happiness and joy, besides being with my family and friends, and also things like reading books and entering the mind of someone else that you never met but they wrote a book and let you go inside their minds for a little bit and have a taste of it. Like music; humans make music and it’s beautiful, so I think that if we focus on those things, that is what life is, or what life should be.

Nerina: Thank you so much, Clarissa, for this conversation.

Clarissa: Thank you, Nerina.

Nerina: And thank you for listening, thank you for watching and thank you for sharing. Keep wondering and see you next time again. Goodbye and ciao.

Biography:

Scientist who after finishing her bachelor in Biology in Peru (UNMSM) decided to look for new avenues of professional development. She did exchange studies in Finland at the University of Turku, got her master in Biomedicine at Karolinska Institutet University in Sweden, worked in a pharmaceutical company in Germany and later got a PhD in Molecular Biology in Australia at the University of Queensland.

While finishing the PhD, she started to feel the urge to contribute to the world with something else than only her scientific work at the laboratory. This feeling pushed her to create an organization called Ekpa’palek that empowers Latin-American young professionals through different free mentorship programs that align with the Sustainable Development Goals of reduction of inequalities, gender equality and education.

Encouraged by the impact these programs had on young professionals, she discovered the need for creating new local, regional, and international policies that could help to tackle global issues. Motivated by this, she applied and was selected to participate in numerous events (international conferences, forums, and workshops) in science policy, citizen engagement in policy relevant to science & innovation, science diplomacy, open science & education, science outreach and global governance in different countries (Argentina, Jordan, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Canada, India, Chile, Germany, Thailand and Morocco).

In 2017, she worked at the Agency for Environmental Assessment and Enforcement (OEFA) from the Ministry of Environment in Peru and since May 2018, she works at the EU Science Hub, also known as the Joint Research Center from the European Commission’s science and knowledge service where she provides scientific advice and support to EU policy. Also, as a member of the Global Young Academy, she works on initiatives related to science outreach, women empowerment and science advise.

Learn more about Clarissa's work:
http://www.ekpapalek.com
Connect with Clarissa:
facebook.com/cla.risa.54 twitter.com/Clarissajaz linkedin.com/clarissariosrojas instagram/being_a_scientist_is_cool

#followup with Robert Harris | News

#followup with Robert Harris

Robert Harris, Professor of Immunotherapy in Neurological Diseases at Karolinska Institutet sent us a short video with some interesting news. Have a watch.

Watch the video:

Elena Gerebizza

Elena Gerebizza
Researcher and Campaigner
Biography:

Energy and climate campaigner for Re:Common, a non-profit, public campaign membership-based organization based in Rome, Italy.

Learn more about Elena's work:
https://www.recommon.org
Connect with Elena:
https://twitter.com/elegere
The Trans Adriatic Pipeline: between myth and reality

What are the most environmentally impacting structures in the world right now? Who runs them? What can you do to stop them?
Elena Gerebizza, from Italian organization Re:Common, tells us about the activist movements organized around stopping some of the most environmentally damaging structures taking place at this very moment, and how power and financial monopolies can end up destroying the fragile ecosystems of small town communities across Europe.

With a focus on the social consequences of big companies taking their toll on local European economy, Elena remarks on the importance of sticking together through strategic organization in order to help and improve the lives of many others affected by the finance oriented, and often corrupted, decision making that we see in our countries, our governments, and our everyday life.

Individuals reaching out to one another to secure a sustainable future is the way forward to a society in which everyone’s interests are safe, and Elena tells us how we can achieve that through awareness and collaboration.

Watch the trailer:
Watch the video:
Listen to the Audiofile here:
Read the transcript of Elena Gerebizza's Video here ◂

Elena Gerebizza: My name is Elena Gerebizza. I work for an Italian organization called Re:Common. I’m a researcher and campaigner.

Nerina Finetto: Thank you, Elena, for joining me. Could you tell me a little bit about Re:Common?

Elena: Re:Common is a collective based in Rome, in Italy, and we do public campaigning and investigation on megaprojects, in particular, mega infrastructures that receive public financing in different forms, from loans, from public financial institutions to guarantees, and we look into dodgy aspects related to mega infrastructure, including corruption and misuse of public funding in every different form, and we do it in solidarity with the communities who are on the frontline opposing megaprojects.

Nerina Finetto: One of the biggest projects you are involved in is the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline. Could you tell me more about it?

Elena: We’ve been working on it since 2012, 2013, so from the very early days. The Trans Adriatic Pipeline is a gas pipeline which Europe included in the list of so-called Projects of Common Interest, for the European Commission. Since then, the project received a massive support from the European Institutions, as well as from the Italian Government; this is the main reason why we started to look at it. The Trans Adriatic Pipeline is a section of a longer gas corridor, which is called the Southern Gas Corridor; it is a pipeline which starts in Azerbaijan and goes across six different countries, so Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Greece, Albania and finally, Italy. It is about 3500km long, and as we see, it’s basically crossing the life of hundreds of communities with massive environmental and human rights implications.

Nerina Finetto: One of the aspects you have been researching on is the political one, right?

Elena: The Trans Adriatic Pipeline was portrayed from the very early days as a project that should help Europe to build an independence from Russia. So really, a project that should help the energy security of Europe; this is how the Commission was talking about it, and it should help diversification. In fact, we realized from the very beginning that the very strong political connotation that the project was given, in fact was probably the lead motivation for it, because we couldn’t find any economic and financial sustainably in the project, and we couldn’t also see how this energy diversification and energy security would actually materialize. In fact, through the different years of campaigning, we realized this is not coming only from Civic Societies organizations, but it’s coming from economic and financial analysts and experts in energy matters. We realized that the resources of Azerbaijan are much smaller than what the country declared, and finally last year, it came out that a part of the supply gas that would transit through the Southern Gas Corridor will actually come from Russia, so the point of spending about 45billion euros to build this massive infrastructure, portraying it as something that will help Europe to diversify, is a scam for European tax payers, at the end, and it’s also providing a massive political support to governments like Azerbaijan and Turkey, which, today, it’s clear that are authoritarian regimes.

So, we seek the incredibly problematic, from the political to those from an economic and financial point of view. Part of our campaigning was about exposing how much public resources were drained by such a project, which instead could have been used in many other different ways, even more now after the Paris agreement was signed and so the project is just nonsense from the climate point of view, and it’s really not matching with the commitments that Europe and the different governments involved in the construction have taken in Paris. We really don’t see how and why Europe is still so much supportive of this project.

Nerina Finetto: What are the stakeholders here? Who is building the pipeline and who is paying for it?

Elena: So, the main proponents of the gas pipeline are SOCAR, the National Oil and Gas Company of Azerbaijan, together with BP, British Petroleum, one of the main oil corporations. Then, there are smaller shareholders, or let’s say other shareholders, that came in a later stage, including Snam, the Italian gas distribution company, Enagas, Fluxys, and the Swiss company Axpo, who had a key role in the very early days of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline, because it was actually the company that designed the project before it was then connected to the rest of the Southern Gas Corridor.

Who’s going to pay for it? The project is being portrayed as a private sector project. However we have seen that, for instance, Albania, Greece and also Turkey had to sign host government agreements with the consortium that is building the pipeline – TANAP in Turkey and the Trans Adriatic Pipeline AG in Italy, Albania and Greece -, and in the host government agreement it clearly said that the governments are ready to give a public guarantee for the financing of the project. So that means that if the consortium is, for instance, getting some loans from private banks and from public financial institutions the hosting governments the hosting government will provide a public guarantee, and that is a mechanism that translates a debt from a private to private into a public one, so it means that if anything goes wrong, it’s going to be the citizens of Albania, Greece and Turkey who are going to pay.

The other element is that it was declared in a number of public occasions that the consortium is aiming to get about one third of the funding from public financial institutions; that means the European Investment Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, but also the World Bank or the Asian Development Bank, the Asian Investment Bank, all the variety of public financial intuitions. So one third of 45 billion is a huge lot of money and again, even the public part of the funding should come with a public guarantee from the government or from the commission. The rest of the money may come from equity or from loans from private banks, but again, also the private banks are looking for a coverage of risk, so at the end of the day, the majority of it will be covered by public money in different forms.

Nerina Finetto: And the consortium also received huge loans from the European Investment Bank, right?

Elena: Yeah, actually, the European Investment Bank provided the biggest loan ever in the history of the bank, so since it was set up as the financial institution of Europe, and also quite extraordinary is that it was given to a company registered in Switzerland, so outside the European Union, formally, which of course is interesting form the tax angle of the story. Why the consortium is registered in Switzerland? Also from the transparency point of view, because as we know, Switzerland is not in the black list of tax havens, formally, but it’s still a country where access to information concerning companies registered in Switzerland is quite limited. So, actually a 1.5billion loan was given to the Trans Adriatic Pipeline and now the loan by the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development is being discussed. The loan is 500million, but it will be combined with another 700million coming from several private banks, which, again, are matching with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in order to get the coverage of the risk connected to the loans.

It’s a massive amount of public money and the question mark is on how these banks will be actually able to the do the due diligence and to make so that the consortium will respect the environmental and social standards, but also the transparency and, eventually, the corruption angle is quite relevant considering, for instance, the massive scandal that was everywhere on the media last year, called the Azerbaijani Laundromat, so we know that the players involved are players of this kind, and we are really questioning if the European institutions are actually able to monitor how the money will be spent to avoid the human rights violations and environmental violations.

Nerina Finetto: Elena, could you please summarize shortly what this scandal is about?

Elena: So the Azerbaijani Laundromat was out on the media around October 2017. It was a leak, eventually, from one of the banks involved in a massive money laundering scheme where you had three different companies, or maybe even more, from Azerbaijan, who actually channeled across Europe about 2billion euros between 2012 and 2014; money which was then tracked by the authorities. There is an investigation, an internal investigation to Danske Bank, who was actually the bank involved in the money laundering factor; there is another investigation at the Council of Europe, and maybe the most important one is an anti-corruption and money laundering investigation by the public authorities in Italy. So the scheme was involving a number of politician, but also journalists and entrepreneurs in Europe who received huge amounts of money, mainly from Azerbaijan, and according to the public prosecutor in Italy, one of the beneficiaries was a former member of Parliament, Luca Volonté, who is still under trial in Milan, and the accusation for him is for international corruption and money laundering. Now the trial is still ongoing, the corruption accusation was appealed; we don’t know how it will conclude, but the key element is if people are asking themselves why this money was given.

Actually between 2012 and 2014, Azerbaijan was moving a massive political and communicational machine inside Europe to get recognition as a democratic country, which could become a key economic partner of Europe, mainly in the sector of energy. So there was a report on human rights violations in Azerbaijan, who was discussed at the Council of Europe, and Luca Volonté was the head of the European People’s Party at the time, so the accusation is that he was actually receiving the money in order to convince the entire political patty across Europe to vote against the report, and this is what actually happened. The report didn’t pass through the Council of Europe, and Azerbaijan was recognized as a democracy a couple of months after the Southern Gas Corridor became project of common interest for Europe. So, we think that there is a lo that should be looked at about how the decision was taken by European institutions, and we also think that it’s quite tricky for Europe actually choose a new authoritarian regime as a key energy partner after we have seen how the situation became very complex with Russia, so we don’t see a lot of a difference between Azerbaijan and Russia in this specific context.

Nerina Finetto: And it is also pretty interesting that Germany gave money to Turkey to build the pipeline in Turkey. How do you see it?

Elena: All of this was, of course, taking place at the same time as the war in Syria escalated. All the dynamic between Turkey and Russia and the EU, the refugee issue in Turkey, everything was happening at the same time and within that, the energy agreements and the Southern Gas Corridor as the biggest energy infrastructure that Europe is building at this moment, are overlapping with the other discussions, which is making it even more serious as a matter for European citizens, because we are actually bargaining human rights on one side, refugees and the new gas contracts, all on the same table.

Nerina Finetto: And from an energy point of view, does this pipeline make sense?

Elena: No, not in my opinion, and not in the opinion of many economic, financial and energy specialists. If you compare the cost of the pipeline and the quantity of gas that they’re claiming to transport, it doesn’t make any sense. It’s really too expensive. But at the end of the day, the real question is, do we need this gas? So the pipeline is expensive, it’s supporting authoritarian regimes, do we actually need the gas? The answer in ‘no, we don’t need ot’. We don’t need it because Europe has enough infrastructure in Europe already existing; we don’t need because the gas at the end of the day will very likely come from Russia, and we already have pipelines connecting Europe to Russia, and the energy path that Europe should follow for the future is rather a path where the consumption of gas should decrease. It has been decreasing in the last year, so if we really want to build an independence from controversial partners around Europe, then we should look into renewable sources and a completely different system where, eventually, communities may also be taking responsibility and control of the energy produced on their territories. So, it’s a completely different model what we should look at for the future if sustainability is the horizon that we are looking at, and also is the horizon is an horizon of democracy and participation of communities in the decision making. We don’t agree with those that portray gas as a bridge fuel for the future, simply because the time that we have to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels is quite limited. I mean, all the scientific studies are saying we are already consuming too much fossil fuels and we should rather reduce it and not build a new infrastructure.

If the Southern Gas Corridor is completed and is running at full capacity, we will all be consuming that gas for the next fifty years, and this is just completely unsustainable from a climate point of view, but also our main concern is rather on the democracy implications that this will have, as it will be basically supporting existing authoritarian regimes for the next fifty years, and this is, of course, very problematic, and if the pipeline starts to generate revenues, where will the money go at the end of the day? Will it go to the public coffers and will it be used also for the benefit of the people of Turkey, of Azerbaijan, and of the different countries involved, or will it go into the private pockets of the existing regimes and their entourage? This is a question that is not being addressed, and we think that the way that Europe is approaching it is not solid enough.

Nerina Finetto: And how about the environmental impact of the pipeline?

Elena: The pipeline you should imagine as not only a gas pipe underground, but you should imagine it as a corridor. So in Turkey, this is kilometers wide, and that means that not only a pipeline will be built, but we’re talking about 2,000km for something like 6 to 8km wide. It’s a huge section of the territory, so everyone who is living on that territory, its own interests and its own rights, are being put on a secondary level compared to the investment agreement that the government of Turkey signed. It’s very difficult, of course, to engage with communities who are opposing the pipeline in Turkey, and it’s very dangerous in Turkey today and in the last few years to be publicly against such a project, because the project is portrayed as a project of national interest, so it means being against the government.

The same thing is happening in Greece and in Albania; in Greece the pipeline is going across the most fertile area of northern Greece; farmers are on the frontline, in the region of Kavala and they are seeing the frontline today. So, since the construction started, they have been seen abuses and violations of their property by the companies, so they literally blocked the construction. There hasn’t been a proper assessment of their demands, neither from the government of Greece or from the European financial institutions involved, and we think that this really critical and, somehow, it’s a challenge to the European legislation on public participation and the environment, so the Orus Convention and every European law that should guarantee public participation are really at stake in this moment.

In Albania, the internal political situation is also very difficult. We talk about communities in the northernmost parts of the country which basically are about to lose everything. It’s farmers communities who live off farming and they may have some fruit trees and olive growths, and this is not for big business, it’s small land for basic sustainability of the family, so when this people are losing their land, you can compensate them for the actual value of the land, but the point is, what will those families survive from in the coming years? And this is not being addressed properly, we think.

If we arrive in Italy, the resistance is very strong. Since 2012, we have seen a popular opposition movement, really made of families, of mothers, of grandmothers, of youth and elderly, everyone together opposing the pipeline. The first thing is because of the environmental impacts, of course; we talk about an area of Italy which is having the most pristine beaches, and the sea is the main resource they have. All the economy is rooted on small scale tourism; it’s a community of farmers, they have olive growths and just basic agriculture, and for these communities, the pipeline is also representing an economic and industrial model, which is completely clashing from the economy they are living from today, and also from their idea of future, so it is really about the future, the future generations, and also protecting a healthy environment for them.

Beside the pipeline in Melendugno and actually in the middle of four different communities, the project is also about building gas pressurizing stations, which is like – you can imagine like a turbo gas power plant right in the middle of communities. It’s going to be polluting; the company can say whatever they want, but it’s really about burning gas right there, but also it will have a potential risk of explosion. We have seen, not long ago, a similar plant exploding in Austria. That one was in the middle of nowhere, luckily, so there were no humans hurt and no communities live next to it, but in Melendugno, the first houses are at less than 500m from the actual plant, so people are really afraid of their security on top of everything else, and this is just to give you the sense of why people are opposing the pipeline so fiercely. They are really putting themselves between the so called ‘construction site’, which is basically the land where they live, and the machines form the company.

So last year, we have seen a very strong resistance form the people, but also very strong repression the state, who sent hundreds of policemen and army on the spot to defend the interest of the company, and we have seen a massive democracy issue there, with local authorities taking the sides of the communities, and the state with the police taking the side of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline consortium.

Nerina Finetto: And the pipeline is going to be also underwater. Is this an issue?

Elena: The community of Melendugno, from the very early days, has set up a commission of experts, so they have screened rhe project from page one to page two thousand, and the way that the company’s portraying this undersea pipeline, from their point of view, is just impossible to do. They claim that there will be no damage on the beach, and that there will be no damage on the sea. They’re trying to do something really challenging in an area where the soil is very fragile; the coast is not made of hard rocks, it’s sand and a very fragile type of rock which is continually being eroded by the sea, so it’s a very peculiar area.

By the way, it’s also a protective area; there are several protective areas on land and in the sea. People simply don’t believe that there will be no damage and that they can continue to go on the beach just on top of the gas pipeline, which is what the company is saying. The community really informed itself through the years; there have been so many meetings with experts and with people really explaining the project to the residents, and now people feel empowered and they know simply that what the company is claiming they will do is just not going to help them, and so they are simply afraid that once the project starts, then they will have to live with a completely destroyed environment and with damages that will be irreversible forever, so it is really about the future of the community and protecting the environment as it is, but also deciding about the future. I mean, do we think that the community should have the right to decide about their future? They think they want to help that right, so they are reclaiming the right to decide about what should be done or what shouldn’t be done in their community. I think it’s really a strong cash of the democratic institutions of the state with the local authorities claiming the right to decide, and the central government basically giving everything in the hands of the company.

Nerina Finetto: And now we have also a new political situation in Italy, because the newly elected environmental minister is taking a new approach to the pipeline. Is it correct?

Elena: In Italy, we had elections in March. Finally. a new government is taking shape, and the first declaration of the environment minister is that the Trans Adriatic Pipeline is a pointless project, so it doesn’t make any sense for Italy. He’s looking into the environmental import assessment, and he claimed that they may reopen the process. So basically, the minister declared that something may have been wrong with the authorization of the pipeline; we, of course, now want to see the minister taking steps, so we want to see if the project is pointless, will the new government continue to support it or not? And this is a very strong political issue, so the communities and the popular movement have their demands, they are very clear, so we will see now in the coming weeks is the government will be consistent with the first declarations.

Nerina Finetto: What is your call to action?

Elena: We think that the Trans Adriatic Pipeline, and also the Southern Gas Corridor, is a project that everyone in Europe should be concerned about. It has to do with the future of Europe. We think that the communities in Italy, but also the communities in Turkey, or in Albania, in Greece, which have probably a political context that make it more difficult for them to respond, we’d like a popular resistance. These communities are in the frontline, but what they are defending is also our future, and I think that the support should be shown in a variety of ways. Support and solidarity from everyone across Europe. So one point is to understand who are all the different actors that are taking direct benefit form the construction of the pipeline, and to understand that what is being portrayed as our general interest, like energy security or independence from Russia, actually is just false. I mean, it’s really only political talks, but it is nothing to do with the reality that is behind this project.

I think if we all agree that we don’t need this gas, and if we all agree that the construction of the pipeline is hiding economic and financial interest that are rather personal and have nothing to do with the collective benefit of Europe, then we should just take a stand and decide on which side do we want to be.

Nerina Finetto: Where do you get you motivation from?

Elena: My motivation is really the motivation of someone who has the opportunity to be on the ground with the people who are on the frontline, so I do my investigation, but also I meet the people, I see the action impacts, I see the environmental and the social impacts, but also I talk with the people and I realize that what they want and the legislative framework that should protect them is actually somehow not working, like all the words about democracy and human rights, they just don’t match with what actually happenes on the ground.

When the interest is so high, the more we talk about projects of strategic interest for Europe, the more we realize that the voices or those on the ground are not being heard, and there is really a vacancy of democracy in Europe that has to do with that. So when the space is being restricted, when violence is being used, when the state is repressive towards the community and is not listening anymore, we think thet there is a problem, and when all of this is happening in the name of private interest, we realize that more and more it has to do with something that really is beyond what is the democratic structure of our country, and we think it should be exposed. So my motivation comes, I think, from the need of justice, and of seeing justice really being addressed, somehow.

I think we have to force the so called democratic institutions to take the stand of those that stand below, the normal people living everyday’s life, and I think also about questioning these new public-private combo that we see, where the public and private are basically all together, and so we see the State defending multinationals or big industrial and financial interests, but not in the name of the people. So, I think there is really the need to make clarity, and to take more and more concrete examples out there so that everyone can also have an informed opinion about what is going on, and whether this is really the place where we want to be. Are these are the rules that we think are the right rules, and is the State is still representing the interest of the communities when such things happen.

Nerina Finetto: What needs to be done?

Elena: I think that we need to be more and more responsible of our lives, and we need to take the responsibility of taking care of the place where we live and the people we live with. More and more we need to feel that we are part of a community, and that as a community we may be able to define what we want for our future. So it’s not the individual human being that decides, but it should be more and more the space of our community who decides and who is also able to take care of itself as the State is jut not able to do anymore. So in the places where people feel like they are forgotten by the state, I think that the challenge is to reorganize somehow and start to take the responsibility of taking care of each other, which includes the people, but also the environment, It includes also the type of economic activities that we think should take place in the place where we live if we want it to be sustainable in the longer future.

Nerina Finetto: What kind of society do you dream of?

Elena: I think this is the society that I dream of. It’s a society where people are able to take care of themselves and of each other, and where they feel that collaborating with each other is probably the best way to foresee a future. So I imagine a future where imagines are real communities of individuals that feel close one to the other and are able together to decide what they need and how to achieve it. I imagine that if we are able to be open and collaborative, we should be able to also redefine our future in a way that is sustainable for the planet and for ourselves.

Nerina Finetto: Do you have a dream, Elena?

Elena: A personal-? I think this is my dream, at the end. I mean, it’s a dream that I see. It’s not a fantasy, because I know people and I’m probably part of communities that are in the making, and I think that a lot of the resistance I’ve seen is also containing in themselves the seeds of the new ‘Other Worlds’, like the Latin-Americans like to call them. But our communities, by questioning an economic model, they also start to question how a society functions, and they are rediscovering a collective way of doing things, which is like aware of power as a big issue, and so they try to address it on one side, but they are also aware that being collaborative and able to do things together, including talking together to discuss and have different opinions, is a resource and not a problem. I think this is the way forward.

Nerina Finetto: Thank you so much for this conversation, Elena.

Elena: Thank you!

Nerina Finetto: And thank you for watching, thank you for listening, and thank you for sharing. Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any suggestion. Keep wondering, and see you next time again. Bye and ciao.

Biography:

Energy and climate campaigner for Re:Common, a non-profit, public campaign membership-based organization based in Rome, Italy.

Learn more about Elena's work:
https://www.recommon.org
Connect with Elena:
https://twitter.com/elegere

Souleymane Bachir Diagne

Souleymane Bachir Diagne
Philosopher
Biography:

Souleymane Bachir Diagne received his academic training in France. An alumnus of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, he took his Ph.D (Doctorat d’État) in philosophy at the Sorbonne (1988) where he also took his BA (1977). His field of research includes Boolean algebra of logic, history of philosophy, Islamic philosophy, African philosophy and literature.

He is the author of Boole, l’oiseau de nuit en plein jour (Paris: Belin, 1989) (a book on Boolean algebra), Islam and the Open Society: Fidelity and Movement in the Philosophy of Muhammad Iqbal (Dakar, Codesria, 2011), African Art as Philosophy: Senghor, Bergson, and the Idea of Negritude (Seagull Books, 2011), The Ink of the Scholars: Reflections on Philosophy in Africa (Dakar, Codesria, 2016), Open to Reason: Muslim Philosophers in Conversation with Western Tradition (New York, Columbia University Press, 2018).

His book, Bergson postcolonial: L’élan vital dans la pensée de Senghor et de Mohamed Iqbal (Paris: Editions du CNRS, 2011) is forthcoming in an English version to be published by Fordham University Press. That book was awarded the Dagnan-Bouveret prize by the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences for 2011 and on that same year professor, Diagne received the Edouard Glissant Prize for his work.

Professor Diagne’s current teaching interests include history of early modern philosophy, philosophy, and Sufism in the Islamic world, African philosophy and literature, twentieth-century French philosophy.

Learn more about Souleymane's work:
http://cloudconversations.com
Connect with Souleymane:
facebook.com/souleymane.diagne
A passion for philosophy, science and society

What does it mean to be a philosopher in the modern day? Does philosophy still offer answers to todays’ most pressing issues, or does it belong to the questions of the past? What can philosophy teach us that we don’t already know?

Souleymane Bachir Diagne is a Senegalese modern-day philosopher that is here to answer these questions and more. With an extensive academic career that encompasses African literature, History of Philosophy and Francophone Studies across three continents, Souleyman offers a unique point of view on the history of Philosophy in today’s beliefs, actions and ideas, its influence across different cultures, and the decolonization of philosophical concepts.

A strong supporter of doing good in your own sphere before taking on the world, Souleymane believes that human progress goes beyond individual convictions, instead residing in the common forces that move us towards the greater, brighter goal of a shared human experience that pays no mind to religious, national or ethnic fragmentations.
Watch our interview to better understand today’s relationship between philosophy and religion, the importance of both in creating a better world for younger people, and how the ideas of the past have been revolutionized to provide a clearer reflection of today’s philosophical and spiritual needs.

Watch the trailer:
Watch the video:
Listen to the Audiofile here:
Read the transcript of Souleymane Bachir Diagne's Video here ◂

Souleymane: My name is Souleymane. Souleymane Bachir Diagne. I’m a Senegalese philosopher. I’ve taught twenty years in Senegal, after finishing my higher education in France, and in 2002, I crossed the Atlantic again and went to the United States, where I taught Philosophy, first at Northwestern University in the suburbs of Chicago, and then now, I live in New York, where I teach Philosophy and Francophone studies at Columbia University.

Nerina: Thank you for your time and great to speak with you. How did you get into philosophy?

Souleymane: That’s a really good question, because there is some chance, always, in the choices we make. When I finished high school and when I first traveled out of Dakar, in my country Senegal, and went to France to study, I was hesitating between two different paths; one of them would have made me an engineer by now, because I was admitted in a school of Engineering named INSA – Intitut National des Sciences Apliquées -, which was in Lyon, and I also was admitted to go to what is known in the French system as classe préparatoire, these elite paths where students prepare for entrance into école normale supérieure, the system of Grandes Écoles, as it is known in France. The first choice would have meant becoming an engineer, the second choice would have meant becoming a philosopher, and I decided for Philosophy after a while. It took me a while to make that decision, and now I’m very happy I made that decision; that was really what my life was about, being passionate, having feeling this passion for Philosophy, reading texts that I loved, explaining them and writing somehow from them in doing research in the field I had chosen.

Nerina: You had to choose between two completely different paths. What is the relationship between science and philosophy, in your opinion?

Souleymane: What I do is, in fact, not separate them, so the reason why I do not ask myself what is the difference between the two is that I do not separate them in the first place.

Let me give you an example, a precise example of my own work. As I said, I started working in the field of logic, history of logic and mathematical logic, and the author I worked on, George Boole, the British logician and mathematician, who actually invented our binary system, the 0 and 1 that we use in the language of our computers, was an invention of Boole. Something that people do not know is that his project was philosophical in the first place; he wanted to make Aristotelian logic more efficient by using the language of Algebra, and in so doing, he created the scientific object that would be called the Algebra of Boole and that we are using in our computers. So this interpenetration, I would call it, this interaction between science and philosophy is very important, so this is why I believe that the Humanities and the so called ‘Exact Sciences’ should never be separated. After all, it is one human mind which needs, at once, scientific procedures and artistic and humanistic values, and these should be together.

Nerina: What does it mean, being a philosopher in the 21st century?

Souleymane: It’s complicated, what does it mean to be a philosopher? Well, let me answer that question by letting you know what my experience was, and I said I was always between science and philosophy, mathematics and philosophy. The way in which I reconcile those two passions that I had, was when I finished, when I was going to choose a topic for my dissertation in Philosophy to work in the field of Algebra, of Logic, so I wrote a dissertation and my first two books, the first two books that I published, were both in the field of algebra, of logic, so that’s one way of answering your question, to be a philosopher may mean to be a philosopher of science, a historian of science, which was what a did.

And then I went back home, I went back to Senegal, and of course I was going to teach philosophy. My goal, going back home, was to create in the Department of Philosophy in Dakar, a strong curriculum in History, Philosophy of Science, Sociology of Science, because that was my fundamental training, and I did that, I created that curriculum back home. But then, at the same time, you had all the debates going on, and that is what it means to be a philosopher; you cannot be a philosopher in the same way you are a natural scientist or a physicist, etc, etc; which means that you pay attention to what is going on. Your thinking is also one way of intervening; you intervene in the public square, in some respects, or at least something of the debates going on around you find an echo in your thinking. So I could not just decide that ‘Ok, I’m a specialist in philosophy of science, this is what I’m going to do’. I had to be part of the debates that were taking place at that time.
And so one aspect was the question of philosophy in Africa, what does it mean to philosophize in the African continent, to philosophize (indiscernible, 7:02) the problems in Africa. To give you an example, what does it mean to look at African art in its difference from European art, for example. So, those were the debates going on, and I started taking part. The 90’s had been years of transition towards democracy, and so the thinking was about African democracies, what does it mean to make these countries democratic, what kind of institutions were to be designed, so this was a very exciting time for someone to think philosophically about the problems facing Africa.

Another aspect was also the question of religion. I went back home in the early 1980’s, and this was the aftermath of the Iranian revolution, and political Islam as we know it now was very much on the scene, was very much on our screens and our newspapers and so and so forth, and Senegal is a Muslim country, so that was an aspect of the debate as well, what connection should we have now, where’s the intellectual and spiritual tradition of Islam, which is not known and of which philosophy is an important part. So I decided, also, in addition to my more technical teaching in philosophy of mathematics, to teach the history of philosophy in the Islam world, and to intervene in some respect on the debate surrounding Islam today. So, this is a very long answer, but that is for me what it means to be a philosopher. Again, not just chose a path, a specialty and work in that specialty narrowly defined, but being ready to go different ways, to change and to adapt, also, to the discussion about what is going on around you.

Nerina: Religion and philosophy. They are considered by many people be opposite ways to see life. How do you see it? Is there a contradiction?

Souleymane: Well, sure, one could say, defining things in these broad brushes, that on the one hand religion is really about faith, and even blind faith; you have to believe in something, you have to believe without evidence, you have to believe in things that you cannot see, that you cannot touch, that are not for your sensible grasping or even for your human understanding, on the one hand. And then you have philosophy, which is based on reason, rationalism, and proof and evidence. So it would be simple to just oppose the two and say that religion is one thing and philosophy is a very different thing, but now if you look at the history of religions themselves, you can see how, from within religion, there is a need to philosophize; that was the birth of Islamic philosophy, for example.

You cannot just decide that everything has been said once and for all by a revealed text; even the text you have to read it. So you can never be in the situation where you say ‘This ends philosophical questioning and I have the answers now’; you have to build your answers, you have to keep them open, you have to understand how open they are and how open they remain, because it is really, truly, your own human duty to examine. One important Muslim philosopher (indiscernible name, 11:28) has said ‘He who does not doubt, does not examine, and he who does not examine, doesn’t believe’, and this is probably the best single sentence to explain why philosophy is necessary to religion itself and how the connection between the two is really an internal relationship and not an external relationship between two very different things.

Nerina: You mentioned that, as a philosopher, you have to take part in the discussions that take place in the public sphere. Right now, it is religion in focus, and not always in a positive way. How do your books participate in the general discussion?

Souleymane: We live in times where, paradoxically, religion is so present in our lives. I mean, if we open our television sets, we see religion everywhere, and many terrible, violent, unbelievable things being done in the name of religion, and at the same time, we are so ignorant about religions in general, because years and years of so called secularism has made religion something that is not known anymore.
You know, even independently form the political situation that we are living in, and the security questions that religions and fanaticism, rather that religion, by the way, are posing, there’s an ignorance of religion. I mean, younger people are even incapable of reading works of art because they just don’t know who the people represented in art are, and most of the time these are religious characters, biblical characters that you find in paintings and so and so forth. But what it means, also, in particular for Islam, which is probably the religion nowadays associated with violence and everything. It is a terrible thing, and people need to be reminded that this religion was not born yesterday, and it is the religion of one billion and a half people, and it is a spiritual and an intellectual tradition.
So there is a need to make that tradition known, primarily for younger Muslims, for Muslims themselves, and this is what led me to the decision to teach also the tradition of philosophy in Islam, and this is the decision that led me from there to use my teaching for many years and make it a book, and I believe that that book, by precisely reminding people of what this intellectual and spiritual tradition that we call Islam, that we should be knowing as Islam is, this becomes de facto, a kind of intervention in the public square to, again, make Islam known and, primarily, known to Muslims themselves.

Nerina: And your books somehow change the narrative about the history of philosophy, right?

Souleymane: Absolutely. It is important for philosophy, for the discipline of philosophy in general, to sort of decolonize itself, as I would call it, because philosophy has been constructed as a uniquely European phenomenon, and this has happened very recently, actually. Traditionally, historically, philosophers in Greece or in Europe before the contemporary modern times never really thought of themselves as being the unique philosophers that humanity has ever seen; this is something that happened almost around the beginning of colonialism, that Europe defined itself has the heir of Greek philosophy and the continent of philosophy par excellence, and decided that philosophy was really the defining feature of Europe, so African philosophy could not exist; philosophy could not exist anywhere else outside Europe.
So this changed, because the history of philosophy is just not supporting such an idea if you look at who is the heir of Greeks. Many people have been the heir of the Greeks; Greek philosophy was appropriated by the Islamic world, so you have a tradition of philosophy in Islam that we do not know; this is something that I decided to teach, to let my own students know, because we were a department of philosophy in a Muslim country and we needed to know about that tradition as well, and I mean, human beings are naturally inclined towards philosophy, because human beings, by definition, know that they are mortal, they bury their dead, they look up to the sky, and they ask themselves about the destination of humanity, what it means to be human, what it is be born, what it means to die, and so and so forth. So philosophical thinking and philosophical wisdom exist everywhere, so we have to think about that and reconstruct the history of philosophy in such a way that it ceases to be this uniquely Western history of thought, and that is a very important aspect of my work as well.

Nerina: What is the most important lesson that your students have to learn?

Souleymane: You know, to just give you my experience, among the class that I teach in my university, Columbia, I have one class on history of philosophy in the Islamic world, where I introduce my students to classical Islamic philosophy, form 9th century to 13th century, and then also modern questions and so on. I also teach a class that I call African Literature in Philosophy, where I look at what is being written in Africa and what are the problems being debated by African intellectuals and philosophers, and I also teach, of course, general history of philosophy and philosophy of logic, as I’ve always done. And when my students have the feeling that they are more of what Islam is, or that they are more aware of Africa in terms of the intellectual production of the continent – Africa not just being a subject of conversation associated with diseases, problems, epidemics and so on so forth, but what are Africans thinking and writing now, what have they been thinking and also writing – it is not known that, for example, you have a long tradition of written edition in Africa; Africa is generally associated with orality, and people are now discovering all the manuscripts in Timbuktu, for example, that this is not true. And when they become aware of that, when they change their mind about what they thought, or what they thought they knew about the topics that I’m teaching, I think that I have done my job as an educator.

Nerina: What kind of society do you dream of?

Souleymane: Well, I dream of a society that would not be fragmented into what I call ethno-nationalisms, which is unfortunately what we have today. It is not just that there is a kind of stiffening of identities where people are fighting in the name of their religious identities or their national identities and so and so forth. It’s not just religion, but even in the field of politics we can see that. What I call ethno-nationalism is, as well, all these movements, extreme right movements, that we are calling populism. We should call them tribalism, because that is what it is, and my dream is the reconstruction of the philosophical and ethical idea of one humanity, which means hospitality.
Let’s look at the crisis of migrants that we have nowadays, refugees and migrants. They are met with what the Pope has called the globalization of indifference. The Pope is appalled and is always reacting against what he sees as indifference to human suffering, because we are so fragmented and thinking about ourselves and people who look like us, have the same religion, have the same skin color, and so and so forth. We are losing sight of the ethical general idea of humanity, in general. And that is the foundation for common life, that is the foundation for building together our Earth, that is the foundation of having the sense that we are one, our Earth is one, and the we should come together and take care of it.
This was, for example, something we saw during the Paris agreement on our environment. This was a wonderful metaphor for the idea of humanity being one, and looking in the same direction and taking care of our common home, which is our Earth. Unfortunately, we have seen the forces of fragmentation come again, when the United States, for example, just decided that they are going to, you know, come out of this common agreement and so and so forth. So that is, somehow, what I think is important, and will be the ultimate goal of all the different aspects of my work, working really to what’s, you know, this general idea, this universal idea of one humanity.

Nerina: How can we reconstruct our notion of humanity?

Souleymane: This is long-term thinking. In the short term, it has to be played on the political ground; we have to resist this type of populism. I believe that we have to fight for that ideal of a world of social justice, where you do not just have a global capitalism indifferent to human suffering and to that kind of fragmentation that I have described.

Nerina: Do you have a dream?

Souleymane: Well, I’ve had for a long time the dream of, you know, all young people have that dream, of changing the world, and I was thinking of doing science, I was thinking of having the discovery that would change things on Earth and things like that. Growing up, you learn to be much more humble than that, and you just ask yourself ‘Ok, am I, right now, touching the lives of people and changing things in my own sphere of influence?’, because, if you are in my position, obviously you have some influence on certain number of people. So my dream is to be able at one point to ask myself honestly that question and be able to answer that yes, I did that, and I realized that wish of making difference in the lives of a certain number of younger people.

Nerina: What is life about?

Souleymane: For me, life is about love; in other words, the force of life. I believe in the force of life. If I have to define myself in terms of my philosophy, I would say that I am very much a vitalist, in the sense that I believe in the force of life, and I think that the force of life is the same as the force of love. That this world has been created out of love as an open ended, always emerging cosmology; that this world is something that human beings have to invent an reinvent all the time, and that the energy they use, the force they use for that, which is the force of life, is the same as the force of love. So, for me, that is the sort of cosmic significance of love, it is also the personal significance of love. It is because the world itself is a creation of love, and that its movement forward is the movement of love, that our individual lives are always about love.

Nerina: Thank you so much for this conversation, and thank you for watching, thank you for listening and thank you for sharing. Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any suggestion. Keep wondering, and see you next time again. Bye and ciao.

Biography:

Souleymane Bachir Diagne received his academic training in France. An alumnus of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, he took his Ph.D (Doctorat d’État) in philosophy at the Sorbonne (1988) where he also took his BA (1977). His field of research includes Boolean algebra of logic, history of philosophy, Islamic philosophy, African philosophy and literature.

He is the author of Boole, l’oiseau de nuit en plein jour (Paris: Belin, 1989) (a book on Boolean algebra), Islam and the Open Society: Fidelity and Movement in the Philosophy of Muhammad Iqbal (Dakar, Codesria, 2011), African Art as Philosophy: Senghor, Bergson, and the Idea of Negritude (Seagull Books, 2011), The Ink of the Scholars: Reflections on Philosophy in Africa (Dakar, Codesria, 2016), Open to Reason: Muslim Philosophers in Conversation with Western Tradition (New York, Columbia University Press, 2018).

His book, Bergson postcolonial: L’élan vital dans la pensée de Senghor et de Mohamed Iqbal (Paris: Editions du CNRS, 2011) is forthcoming in an English version to be published by Fordham University Press. That book was awarded the Dagnan-Bouveret prize by the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences for 2011 and on that same year professor, Diagne received the Edouard Glissant Prize for his work.

Professor Diagne’s current teaching interests include history of early modern philosophy, philosophy, and Sufism in the Islamic world, African philosophy and literature, twentieth-century French philosophy.

Learn more about Souleymane's work:
http://cloudconversations.com
Connect with Souleymane:
facebook.com/souleymane.diagne

Sandra Goulart Almeida

Sandra Goulart Almeida
Professor of Literary Studies
Biography:

Rector of UFMG, placed in the southeast of Brazil, the most industrialized region of the country. UFMG is a free-of-charge public educational institution, in the oldest university in the state of Minas Gerais.

Women. Readers. Writers. Translators.

“To be a feminist means to have a position in which you believe that you are able to do whatever you want to do without having to tell people that you have the right to”. So speaks Sandra Goulart Almeida, Brazilian professor and president of the Federal University of Minas Gerais, who devotes her work to the research of feminist literature, its history and its parallels in today’s world.

Literature has always been a reflection of our society, so it’s only appropriate that female writers get a long denied focus by intellectuals such as Sandra to better understand matters of cultural identity regarding the role of the woman all over the world, while also zeroing in on the ways that language builds us as members of one great community.

Listen to Sandra shed light on female authors who discuss the identity of women throughout different cultures, as well as how these identities and cultures must be approached and respected through external mediums to preserve and expose its ways of life and thought.

Watch the trailer:
Watch the video:
Listen to the Audiofile here:
Read the transcript of Sandra Goulart Almeida's Video here ◂

Sandra: I’m Sandra Goulart Almeida, I’m a professor at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, in Brazil. I’m also currently the president of the university.

Nerina Finetto: Thank you, Sandra, for joining me. What are the topics you are interested in?

Sandra: I like to work with comparative literature. I like to see what women are writing about; so mostly I work with contemporary women writers, and I like to see what they are writing from different parts of the world. So that’s what I’m passionate about. So for that reason, I’m also interested in feminist criticism, and also in the notion of cultural translation, since I work with literatures in English, and literatures in Portuguese. I think these are fields that are very exciting for us today; it’s a good time for us to be discussing those issues. There are, I think, in the history of literary studies, it has never been so many women writing.

Sandra: So I’m interested in researching about what women are writing at the moment, what are they interested in.

Nerina Finetto: What are women writing about?

Sandra: That’s an interesting focus. They’re writing about just everything right now. There was a moment in which we could just say that women were writing about their experience as women, you know? They’re writing about taking care of children, about other relations with women, what it is like to live in the private sphere. But now it’s a good, a very interesting time for us, because they’re writing about everything. What I’m mostly interested in, since I work with comparative literature, is how they talk about the notion of space. Especially because I work with women who write in English, but they live, for example, in other countries. So they are part of what is known as contemporary diasporas. So I am interested in that as well, what these women are writing about.

Nerina Finetto: And what are these women writing about?

Sandra: I just published a book on space, women writers and space, the notion of space, diaspora, migration. So I’m doing some research, also, on two aspects of what women writers are talking about. First one is the notion of affect, that a lot of women writers are choosing some affects of emotions to talk about the present moment. But most of them are angered, we have a lot of notion of anger, fear, you have that as well, so I’ve been working with that. And now I’m starting a research on the notion of post-human feminism, that is, women writers, how they’re also writing from others’ perspective. In the effect that believing there’s not a centrality of the human anymore. That are other things that we have to concede when we are discussing our contemporary world.

Nerina Finetto: What kind of things?

Sandra: Some women, I can give an example, Margaret Atwood was a Canadian writer, who’d been writing a lot about that, about how the future is going to be a society in which humans are going to share either physical or psychological, or even the space without animals, but also with machines as well. So the fact of that, we live in a nature that there is no way that we can have the centrality of men, as we understood that, for example in the 19th century or in the previous century, some questioning, showing how women are writing about those topics as well.

Nerina Finetto: Do women write in a different way than men?

Sandra: You could say that, especially in the past we could say that the women, they tend to have a different way of writing, but I think this question doesn’t take us anywhere. The question of sexual difference, I believe that it does more harm than good, because then we start establishing “rules” for how women should write and how men should write. And I think that’s not what I am interested in. I think women are writing regardless of what we say they are writing about. There are a lot of women who are writing about the experience of migrants, as refugees or people who live in transit. It’s something that’s more recent for women to write about; it’s nothing about the private sphere, they’re writing about what it is like to be out there, so I am interested in that. I think asking whether they like different from men, limits the scope of what they can do.

Nerina Finetto: This means that actually we do not need these categories, ‘men’ and ‘women’ writers.

Sandra: No. Yeah.

Nerina Finetto: But at the same time, you tell me that you are interested in female literature. You do not say “I am interested in literature”. Why?

Sandra: For historical reasons. Traditionally, there are more men writers, it has always been easier for men to publish. Being a writer was something that men were, not women in the 18th century. Women started really publishing extensively in the 19th century, over all. So the area of literature, of writing, is traditionally dominated by men, so I think there are two different things here; one, it’s the historical conditioning of women as writers. Either they were silenced for many years, or they were published and nobody knew about them, or because they were not writing because the social and political and economic conditions were not favorable for them. And now we are in a very good time in history, and we could say that the conditions are better for women to write, and they are writing. So I am interested in what they have to say, there is still some kind of prejudice against women as writers, or in all professions in general, so I think it’s a political position, you know, giving visibility to what they write, how they write, what they discuss. Many of them talk about their conditions as women, many of them discuss issues related to the body, you know. So there are some things each day they talk about, and that you don’t usually find in writings by men.

Sandra: But again, it does not mean that they have to write about this. My position as a literary critic is not to set up the standards for them to write according to those standards, but rather to see what they are doing, to examine what is behind the kind of narrative that they are constructing.

Nerina Finetto: Is there a writer who you admire and would like people to know more about? And why?

Sandra: There are many writers I am interested in, as I said I work with literatures in English, and also in the context of Brazil and literature. There is a Nigerian writer who’s been very well-known, and I like her work because of the political position that she stands for. Her name is Chimamanda Adichie. Not only does she write novels, short stories, but also she gives lectures and then they turn into essays. You can find them in the internet. For example, she has a very interesting lecture that she gave about the danger of a single story, so this is available for whoever wants to listen to in the internet. And she also gave another lecture about We Should All be Feminists, that’s the title. And that was turned into a booklet about showing her belief that men and women should all be feminists, so there is a position that we have to take in relation to society. And recently she has published another one about how to raise a daughter as a feminist. So I like the fact that she is a writer; she writes fiction, very very interesting fiction, she talks about several important issues for women, but also for humankind in general. But she also has a theoretical thinking about her position as a writer. And I like that. I think it’s inspiring, the kind of work that she’s doing.
Chimamanda: So that to create a single story. Show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become. It is impossible to talk about the single story without talking about power. There’s a word, an [inaudible 00:08:45] word, that I think about whenever I think about the past structures of the world. And it is “nkali”; it’s a noun that loosely translates to ‘to be greater than another’. Like economic and political worlds, stories too are defined by the principle of nkali. How they are told, who tells them, when they are told, how many stories are told, are really dependent on power. Power is the ability, not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person.

Nerina Finetto: I really like The Danger of a Single Story and I really like her message and theoretical position. And probably the richness that we can have through different narratives is also one of your main topics, right?

Sandra: So there’s something that I am interested in, these women writers are telling a different story. A story that we have never heard before. There is also a Brazilian writer whom I like very much, who’s called Conceição Evaristo. She’s a black writer, and she talks about her experience, you know. She comes from a very poor family, in a country that has a tradition of racism, so she talks about her experience as a black woman in Brazil, and she talks about several other narratives that we usually do not encounter on an everyday basis on the literatures of the country. You come across that occasionally, but not that often. So I think this is a very important issue, to have these writers tell stories that we’re usually not familiar with, that we have not heard before. For example, Adichie, she tells this story of the Biafran War, which was a tragedy in terms of history. She tells that from her perspective, from the perspective of women, from the perspective of a poor boy, in the story. So she gives us the possibility of looking through literature, looking at histories. She and Evaristo also do that.

Sandra: I remember that story from when I was a child, I remember the pictures of the children in Biafra dying because of hunger, but I didn’t know the context. So I just read her novel, and it’s very good. I do recommend Half of a Yellow Sun.

Nerina Finetto: I mentioned you are not only writing and teaching about women’s literature, but you are also a role model for young women because of your position at the university. How do you see it?

Sandra: I think more than being a woman in the university, I think there’s still many women who teach at my university, but they’re not as many women who address the issue of women writers, of gender studies, or feminist criticism, they’re not as many. So, of course, I’ve been doing that for the past 20 years. And I usually say that my role is to teach the younger generation, you know? And I’ve noticed a change. I think the women nowadays are more interested in the subjects. Whenever I teach a course, I have many people wanting to take a course with me because they are interested in what I have to say regarding gender studies, about literature written by women, about feminist literary criticism. So I think it’s my role; my position as a professor, as a teacher, it’s really to teach the younger generation, who in turn will teach younger generations too. So I usually tell them “we have a task, a role to play in teaching them, even in the most basic level.” For example, to watch a film, and be able to criticize the way that women are portrayed in the films, to see an advertisement and see how sexist or how racist that advertisement is, beyond the study of literature. I think it’s an everyday practice.

Nerina Finetto: What is the lesson that your students have to learn, if there is such a thing as one lesson?

Sandra: To be critical. They have to be critical. They should never take anything for granted, no discourse for granted, no news for granted, no narrative for granted. They do have to be critical about what they are reading; to be able to stand and say “What is behind this? What is discussed here?”. So I usually try to tell them that they do have to be critical, they have to have a critical position regarding either the object of study, or anything that they’re reading or they’re watching.

Nerina Finetto: And what is the most important lesson that you have learned from your research?

Sandra: Maybe that’s exactly the same lesson that I have learned. That there are many stories being told, that we have to know those stories to start with, we have to know about what other women are writing about, and we do have to be critical about what we read in general. Not only about what women are writing, but what we read on an everyday basis.

Nerina Finetto: Was there a turning point in your life that determined who you are now?

Sandra: I think I’ve always been like that, I think I’ve always been interested in the topic, maybe because of the way that I was raised. I had a very interesting grandmother. I am of Lebanese descend, so she had a very difficult life in the sense that she was not allowed to study, she was not allowed to do what she wanted to do as a woman. She was a musician, but she wasn’t at the time, she had to get married, to have children, so she didn’t… so she gave me a lot of support, because I always was very much interested in doing research. I was always a feminist at heart.

Nerina Finetto: What does it mean to be a feminist?

Sandra: It means to have a position in which you believe that you are able to do whatever you want to do without having to tell people that you have the right to. You just do it, you can do whatever or as much as men do, so there should be no limitations. I do believe in equal rights for men and women.

Nerina Finetto: What does it mean to you, being a professor?

Sandra: This is what I like best about the kind of work that I do. As I said I am an administrator, but I like to be a professor, I like to publish, I like to think. I like to be able to teach my students a lot of the things that I research on. I think it’s a way for you to pass on not only your knowledge, but it’s a way for you to contribute to a better society. I do believe in that.

Sandra: As I said, if my students leave my classroom and they learn to be better readers, more critical about what happens in the world, I’m happy with what I did with my job. That’s what I like best.

Nerina Finetto: What is the role of the humanities, in your opinion?

Sandra: I think all over the world, there is being the evaluation of the humanities. I think we can’t deny that. I think the way that the world has evolved, what has been valued, is usually the exact science, administration, not very much the humanities, which of course I think it’s a mistake. I think the humanities are essential for our world as it is nowadays. Not only because it provides us with the tools to be more critical about what goes on in all other disciplines, but also because it adds to whatever you are doing in the other fields. So I’m very much a believer in the power of interdisciplinary, to your transdisciplinary, that’s what people have been talking about. A world that is not limited to a discipline specifically.

Sandra: So because we have moved towards a society that wants results more than anything else, the humanities have been devalued as a profession. Which I think is horrible for the world, and I think, on the contrary, what has to be done, is to have more dialogue among the disciplines, so that the humanities are able to do what it does best, which is to open the grounds for other ways of thinking, to be critical, I think it teaches us how to be critical, it teaches us how to deal with the other. That’s what we have to do all the time, especially in the world we live in.

Nerina Finetto: To deal with others and to listen to others. One of your main interests is also translation, right?

Sandra: The ideal situation would be for us to know other languages, but since we do not know other languages, the means for us to listen to the other that we would not otherwise listen to, is by means of translation. But that means that the translator has a very important role, the role of mediator. So the translator has to mediate not only the context, but also he or she has to have an ethical responsibility towards the subject whose language this person is translating. So it has to do with cultural diversity. I think in terms of culture, it’s not only translation from language to language. It’s a political positioning as well. Since we cannot learn all the languages of the world, we do need translation so that others can speak through us, and also translators. So I’m interested in that. So I’m working with the Swiss theory of translation as a means to listen to the other.

Nerina Finetto: What connection does language have with identity?

Sandra: It has everything to do. You are built, you’re constructed through language. The way that you think has to do with the language that you speak. What I’m trying to discuss here is that especially those so-called minority languages, if they’re not preserved, if they’re not translated, if there’s no dialogue with the other language, they’re going to end up simply disappearing, you know? So that’s what I’m talking … the important role of the translator as a mediator. Translators are kind of mediators between two worlds. But this translator is a translator who, especially when you translate from, for example, an indigenous language in Brazil, they need to be preserved, but they also need to be translated, if there’s going to be some kind of understanding between the peoples.

Sandra: But for you translate, you have to show respect for that language. Because that language is part of that, an identity of a subject, but it’s also a cultural identity of a people. So it’s important for you to show respect, to show understanding, towards that people.

Nerina Finetto: What kind of society do you dream of?

Sandra: An equal society. We live, especially in Brazil, it’s a very unequal society. Few people have a lot of money, and a lot of people don’t have enough. And I dream of living in a society that is more just, more equal in all aspects, [inaudible 00:20:16] gender equality is very important that people … I dream of a society in which people have access to education and to health. And I try to work towards that aim, because I do believe, and I think education has a major role, and I think universities play a major role in countries like Brazil, in which not many young adults are able to get into the universities, so our contribution is to try and put as many students as possible into the university, so that it reaches a way of social mobility as well. It’s a means of inclusion; it’s a way to give them access to things that otherwise they would not have access to. So I think it’s a long battle. It’s not easy, but that’s what I dream of. When we’re a just, equal, fair, inclusive society.

Nerina Finetto: With all the challenges that we are facing, do you think that we should keep speaking about feminism?

Sandra: It is essential to continue speaking about feminism. It’s essential to do that. I think it’s the way. Feminism has come a long way. It fought many battles, and I think it’s always going to be essential to talk about that. When you still have a lot of violence against women, when women are not allowed to have the same jobs that men do, or the same salary as men do, when women are forced to follow some kind of dress code, because of impositions of a patriarchal society; when all of these are still happening, it becomes even more relevant to talk about feminism. Because it’s about equal rights, about women doing whatever they want to do, having no limitations in terms of what society tells them what they have to do, what they don’t have to do.

Nerina Finetto: It is still pretty complicated for women to combine children, a family, with a career, even your research. How do you see it?

Sandra: If they want to be mothers, they should be mothers. If they want to have kids, they should have kids. They should do whatever they want to do. We don’t tell men what they should do and what they should not do. Nobody ever told them. Maybe they say “we should not cry, because men don’t cry”, maybe like that, but they’re not … if they want to do something, they should be able to do that as well. So I think women can be whatever they want to do. If they want to be mothers, they should be that, if they don’t want to be, they shouldn’t be forced to be mothers, either.

Sandra: I’m not a mother. I don’t have children, but my whole life people ask me “aren’t you going to have children?” What is behind the question is “oh, poor thing, she’s not a mother, oh poor thing”. I don’t feel like that, so it’s nobody’s business. It’s up to me. Because I’m a woman, it doesn’t mean that I have to have children, okay? But if somebody wants to have children, I think they should have. But of course, having children is, the way our society’s structured, is a burden for women most of the time. Not always but most of the time. Why? Because once you have children, it’s difficult for you to have work, to go out and get a good job, you’re responsible for the house. Some women like it, but most of them don’t like it, they want to go out and to do other things, they don’t want to stay home taking care of kids and taking care of the house, but if they do want, and they are happy with that, I have nothing against it. They are not “less” women because of that.

Sandra: So then that’s why politics, based on women rights, is also important. We have to give the women the economic conditions to do that if they want to be mothers. Then we have, what, day care for women, they should have maternity leave so that they can take care of their children then come back to work, they have to be protected by law, because if it’s up to society, they’re not going to be protected.

Nerina Finetto: What was the most difficult day, and what was the most beautiful one?

Sandra: The most difficult day? Possibly one day when I had to face sexism. When I was disregarded for being a woman, when my ideas were not considered, not because somebody doesn’t like my ideas, but because I am a woman, and because of that, my ideas are not valued as a man’s idea. This was a sad moment.

Sandra: And a happy moment was recently, actually, when a student of mine took a course with me, and sent me a message. I think those moments, I think sometimes it happens … it doesn’t happen every day, but it happens once a year, somebody sends you a message saying that you made a difference in her life or in his life; I think this is a very good day. That your teaching, the way that you work, what you did in your job, was important enough for somebody to feel that “oh, my life is changed. It changed the path that I was going towards”.

Nerina Finetto: Thank you, Sandra, for this conversation.

Sandra: Thank you. Thank you, it’s a pleasure.

Nerina Finetto: And thank you for watching, thank you for listening, thank you for sharing. And feel free to reach out to me if you have any suggestions. Keep wondering, and see you soon again. Bye and Ciao.

Biography:

Rector of UFMG, placed in the southeast of Brazil, the most industrialized region of the country. UFMG is a free-of-charge public educational institution, in the oldest university in the state of Minas Gerais.

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