L&L Speaker Interview – Tom Ozden-Schilling, Tufts Dept. of Anthropology

Meet Tom Özden-Schilling, a doctoral candidate in the History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society program at MIT and a lecturer in environmental anthropology at Tufts.

During last week’s Lunch & Learn, Tom explored how the professional goals and social attachments of different forestry scientists have shaped the kinds of stories that computer simulations tell about future forests in British Columbia.

How did you become interested in what you do now?

I was a material engineer in college, but I increasingly found myself wanting to talk to more people and spend more time outside. So I felt like being an anthropologist of environmental science was a good way to do that. I originally started this project by talking to people who did geological modeling because I was interested in creating sophisticated computer simulations. So I went to British Columbia and when I was there, I met people who did forestry, people who did all sorts of GIS analyses, and people who were coming from different aspects of environmental planning for first nation communities. Working with these people naturally led me in this direction.

Has anything you did in college help you build your career?

I spent a lot of time in the lab in college, and I realized I didn’t like it. I was an undergraduate student at MIT and I spent a lot of time at chemistry labs by handling dangerous chemicals, and etc., and while doing this, I came up with a long list of things that I don’t want to do and that kind of guided and helped me find my new passion.

What is the most rewarding aspect of your research?

I think the most rewarding thing about what I do is that I get to learn different stories while meeting new people. I don’t like to just show up and ask abstract questions to other people, but rather, I like getting people to open up about how what they do impacts themselves and their connections to the environment or to the communities. Many of the questions that I am asking now are about my work and mundane things that I do on daily basis—how they will develop into my career and shape how I think about myself as an intellectual, scientist and as a member of a community. So I love that my work allows me to have different conversations with different people at the scale of what really matters to me.

What advice could you give to undergraduate students who want to be like you?

Asking anthropological questions about science and technology can be extremely rewarding—especially if you want to do social science as a part of you career and also have some kind of technical training that allows you to see the technical aspects of other people’s work on your terms, rather than just coming from the outside with theoretical questions, I think that asking anthropological questions is invaluable. Even though I am not doing material science on daily basis anymore, I have a sensibility that I picked up there and it gives me a kind of patience when I am digging into stuff that others are discussing. I think it gives me more sympathy for what matters to them. So long story short, I am a big fan of double majors. Doing something that gives you a broad base can be really enriching. I think it prevents you from aligning yourself too closely with just one discipline. Also if you have a broader base you can find out what is good and what is problematic about your discipline and helps you generate those kinds of conversations.

Which would you say is more important, going to graduate school or gaining work experience?

I think work experience is more important than going to grad school. I would caution anyone against going directly into grad school for anything, because academics tend to think in a very particular way about their subjects, and it is important, like I mentioned before, to get a broad base. So I think being able to exist in the work world, and figure out what is a satisfying career for you outside of an academic environment before pursuing a graduate study is really important. The longer you go without working the harder it is for you to empathize with people outside of academia, and empathy is really important in any work environment.