TLDR: I am a PhD student studying various complex systems and am opposed to my research being co-opted for capitalist/colonial oppression. I am in full support for a free Palestine and total liberation!
Inspired by the holistic perspectives of non-western and indigenous cultures, my scientific research focuses on complex systems: understanding how 'complex' behavior and patterns emerge out of the collective and nonlinear interactions/couplings across multiple scales within a dynamical system. For example, how the interactions between salt-marsh grasses and sediment transport build up a marsh platform to keep up with sea-level rise and sequester atmospheric carbon. Or how the small scale nonlinear and chaotic interactions between sand grains in aeolian transport give rise to incredibly uniform and simple sand ripples and dunes.
The goals of my research are to, in some sense, observe and understand the beauty of nature for its own sake. And NOT to use this understanding to contribute to the exploitative and extractive tendencies of capitalism/colonialism. I.e., my research on wind ripples is purely born out of the remarkable regularity, simplicity and beauty of these patterns. And any understanding we as a society may gain from this research will, I hope, stay pedagogical (i.e., "useless"), as to NOT be used for, say, the continued culture and land erasure, colonization and displacement/oppression of Palestine and the Palestinian people, for example...
Inspired by the holistic perspectives of non-western and indigenous cultures, my scientific research focuses on complex systems: understanding how 'complex' behavior and patterns emerge out of the collective and nonlinear interactions/couplings across multiple scales within a dynamical system. For example, how the interactions between salt-marsh grasses and sediment transport build up a marsh platform to keep up with sea-level rise and sequester atmospheric carbon. Or how the small scale nonlinear and chaotic interactions between sand grains in aeolian transport give rise to incredibly uniform and simple sand ripples and dunes.
The goals of my research are to, in some sense, observe and understand the beauty of nature for its own sake. And NOT to use this understanding to contribute to the exploitative and extractive tendencies of capitalism/colonialism. I.e., my research on wind ripples is purely born out of the remarkable regularity, simplicity and beauty of these patterns. And any understanding we as a society may gain from this research will, I hope, stay pedagogical (i.e., "useless"), as to NOT be used for, say, the continued culture and land erasure, colonization and displacement/oppression of Palestine and the Palestinian people, for example...