A PERSONAL REFLECTION ON WHAT MAKES A (GEOSCIENCE) RESEARCHER (Invited Presentation)

Although no career path is exempt from uncertainty, the traditional academic career path requires accepting a particularly large amount of uncertainty, particularly with regard to financial security and location. On the other hand, an academic career offers a large amount of autonomy in terms of research topics. Towards the end of my PhD, I decided to pursue a career in a location I wanted to live long-term, which has led me to my current role as a research administrator in a university-affiliated research institute that studies energy issues in Alaska. My PhD work looked at how ancient microbes moved electrons around in their environment; my current work is to help the humans who are researching the best ways to move electrons around the built environment. While I am interested in pursuing the threads of research that I started in graduate school; finding time, energy, and funding to publish this research has remained a challenge for me. I am sharing my experience to demonstrate how there is one way to have a career as a researcher. Particularly, my lived experience as a queer, mixed race person of color has meant that there has never been a defined career path for someone who “looks like me.” I will share my experience with belonging in the geoscience community and how that has interacted with different axes of power along the academic career hierarchy. I will also discuss some of the contradictions inherent in the professionalization of research, where formal structures allow people to be compensated fairly for their labor. Finally, I will share some reflections on how expanding my notion of what research looks like has influenced how I approach community-based research.