Guillem Rubio Ramon
Discipline:
Culture, Environment and Sustainability
Now: Development, Environment and Cultural Change
Grade:
Master's
Graduation HF:
2019
Position:
Postdoctoral Research Associate in Human Geography
Employer:
ROH Indies Project (rhoindies.org) & School of Geosciences
University of Edinburgh (eeo.ed.ac.uk)
– Describe the most important tasks you have in your job today
– Since graduating from SUM, my work has mostly been situated at the intersection of animal geographies and political ecologies. Particularly, I am interested in the justice implications of processes, ideas, and concepts in which animal, human, and environmental harms converge. My doctoral research on industrial animal agriculture, as well as my current postdoctoral work on street dogs and multispecies health in India, examines how taking animals seriously can catalyse more comprehensive accounts of environmental, animal, and social justice.
As a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Human Geography, my main tasks consist of contributing to the Remaking One Health: Decolonial Approaches to Street Dogs and Rabies Prevention in India. The project investigates the persistence of rabies as a public health problem in India. This involves the multiple aspects of doing research: from collection and analysis of data to writing research outputs targeting diverse audiences, both academic and non-academic. Besides that, I have also been involved in teaching and public engagement roles, both within the university and outside of it.
– What do you like best about your job?
– One of the things I enjoy most about my job is working on issues that I deeply care about in an atmosphere where I can freely speak my mind, discuss and debate. While there is a definite trend toward over-specialization in academia, I believe that centers like SUM, which resist this, are more necessary than ever. It is precisely the ability to move across different topics while seeing the underlying connections between them that I like most about my job.
– How is the education from The Faculty of Humanities relevant in this job?
– Rather than focusing solely on large quantities of theory, my education at SUM equipped me with the capacity to navigate diverse themes and ‘grammars’ of thought. These skills are increasingly necessary to understand the complexity (and unevenness) of our world today. SUM’s excellent and kind research environment also sparked my interest in a variety of topics from multiple disciplines and offered me the support, confidence and tools to successfully develop my project for a whole academic year.
Furthermore, the international and transdisciplinary academic community that SUM offers has prepared me to work in groups from different backgrounds, nationalities and interests. Lastly, the research internships I undertook while at SUM helped me to develop a set of personal and professional skills complementary to the rest of the courses, which I still put in practice every day.
– What’s your best tip for new students who are thinking about job opportunities after graduation?
– My primary advice would be to get to know your colleagues at SUM, both the students you will become lifelong friends with and also other members of staff who you can share projects and ideas with. Don’t be afraid of dead ends; they rarely are! There are countless debates and ongoing conversations that you will find surprisingly interesting, and to which you can contribute both academically and professionally!
More specifically, I believe SUM offers a comprehensive range of courses that can be complemented with an internship to gain relevant skills and experience from different sectors.
Finally, while conducting your research for your Master’s thesis, remember that this is a process from which you will probably learn a lot in terms of gaining knowledge but also personally, as you meet interesting people and are led to unexpected places.