Note: this site is still a work-in-progress while I learn how GitHub Pages and Jekyll works. I am working on adding posts and some pages to reflect my research interests.
Hi, thanks for visiting this site. I use it mostly as a journal for reflection on my work, the reality I experience, and also to expunge emotions I feel/opinions I have. I have been maintaining a blog (on various sites and under various site names) since 2006, and find that writing really helps clarify my thoughts, although in recent years, my writing volume has much reduced.
Growing up in the context of a rapidly developing Singapore in the 1990s/2000s, I had wanted to “protect nature and the environment”. As such, my formal education has been in the natural sciences focused on biodiversity conservation, but I’ve always been interested in ‘effective conservation’, using GIS and “big data” and incorporating people-side perspectives into decision-making. Over time, however, I realised that even an interdisciplinary approach, if it does not recognise or consider the realities imposed by political institutions and existing power imbalances resulting from colonialism and capitalism, has its limitations in affecting reality. As well, the dominant scientific paradigm we are taught often fails to recognise the multiple different ways of seeing and understanding the world and how knowledge can be produced, which adds to the struggle for a better world for planet and people.
I am presently interested in shifting dominant paradigms to create a more just and pluriversal world that gives space to humans and non-humans in all their diversity, using quantitative methods informed by critical and decolonial perspectives (from political ecology, environmental justice, and the pluriverse). It motivates me to understand the histories that are never taught, the voices that are never heard, and the injustices that are never addressed.
I am rooting for a world where economic growth does not hold a central and dominant force in shaping our realities, where we acknowledge our history and privilege and seek not to abuse power or exacerbate injustices, where different ways of perceiving, valuing, understanding and living are respected, where we live sufficiently and in harmony with the living planet, without the false dichotomy between human and non-human nature. All that said, the majesty of mountains and sublimity of the sea never fail to captivate me.
I can be contacted at jocelyne[dot]sze[at]gmail[dot]com