Caitlin Kight

I currently work in the field of education, but I originally trained as a biologist, and that's the field that I would like to focus on now, because there were many symptoms of coloniality that I struggled with while I was active as a biologist. For example, biology is extremely positivistic. But that doesn't really reflect my own worldview. The sciences tend to favour quantitative data collection methods, but I see many circumstances in which qualitative, or even other techniques like post-qualitative methods are valid and interesting. So many scientists feel that biological research can be completely objective. But I disagree with this. At the end of the day, we are still using devices and analyses that are designed by people to collect and explore data that people then interpret and act on. And every step of the way, the process is influenced by our subjectivity, whether people want to admit that or not. To give a final practical example, I conducted fieldwork around Jamestown, Yorktown and Williamsburg, Virginia, the very first sites where British colonists established themselves in the US, I was very aware of the fact that I was working on stolen land with a tragic history, and that I was benefiting from my access to that land and its resources. Separately, I was also aware that I had a different relationship to my study organism than my labmates did. And that this influenced how I perceived and undertook my own research. I studied birds, and to me, they, like other organisms, or just little people; I value and respect them as fellow living creatures. And this influenced which methods I felt comfortable deploying, and how I perceived their behaviours, which is what I was studying. I felt uncomfortable discussing this with colleagues and in fact, still feel uncomfortable today, because I knew that these were not common views in my field. But I also felt uncomfortable having to hide this part of myself and these beliefs. And I wondered whether and how my unique views might actually be a benefit rather than a hindrance. But this was nothing I could ever officially explore.