By SORTEE | April 4, 2022
[SORTEE member voices is a weekly Q&A with a different SORTEE member]
Name: Bawan Amin.
Date: 07 July 2021.
Position: PhD-candidate.
Research and/or work interests: Animal behaviour and ecology, mainly focusing on patterns at the individual level.
How did you become interested in open research?
It was about the time of my second masters thesis (2016-2017) when I started to see that academia worked differently from what I would have expected. Academia seemed to be focused on impact factors, quantity and political choices, rather than the pursuit of knowledge for humanity, making it fundamentally different from what science is supposed to be. That’s where my interest in changing academia started. I now believe that opening up is a key step into changing back from academia to science.
Where were you born and raised?
I was born in the Kurdish city of Slemani (in 1992), in the Kurdish regions of Northern-Iraq, one year after the Kurdish uprising. My family was strongly involved in the fight for Kurdish independence against the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein. We fled the country and found asylum in the Netherlands in 1997. That’s where I grew up and also where I’ve spent most of my life. Looking back, I think no one would ever think that that little kid born in 1992 would end up working on wildlife biology 2.5 decades later in Western Europe, but that’s exactly what happened!
Tell us about one of your hobbies.
A few years ago, I started playing the guitar. I cannot stress how important it is to have hobbies beside your work. Sure work is important, but I think this current climate where researchers are “expected” to be superhuman and work >60 hours a week is really unhealthy (and unfair). Things are luckily changing and hopefully, more people will be dedicating their time to nice hobbies on the side.
Where to find you online?:
Twitter: @Bio_Bawan
