Anastasia Papangelou, Lorena Axinte, Angela Moriggi, Marta Nieto Romero and Kelli Rose Pearson are outstanding researchers of the MSCA ITN project SUSPLACE.

• Anastasia Papangelou is an environmental engineer working on organic waste management and the circular economy for food. She is also a tireless science communicator and improviser.
• Lorena Axinte is currently working as a future mobility consultant, trying to help local authorities to create conditions for people to explore their cities more actively and sustainably, and to abandon their cars.
• Angela Moriggi is a social scientist and facilitator, working on social innovation, transformative change, and care. She does transdisciplinary and participatory action-oriented research.
• Marta Nieto Romero is a researcher on social-ecological systems, working on communal forms of using, managing and relating to nature. She is engaged in transdisciplinary projects of participatory environmental governance.
• Kelli Rose Pearson has worked in many eclectic environments as a social entrepreneur, as an economic development and sustainability consultant, and now, as a researcher and consultant on the topic of imaginative leadership and the arts for deep sustainability transformations.

What prompted you to pursue a career as a researcher?

• Anastasia: The need to do something that will help make the world a better place; my truly insatiable curiosity and love for learning and the fact that in research my labour is used to make everyone, rather than someone, richer.
• Lorena: A combination of curiosity and desire to learn more about sustainability, plus the luck of being selected as SUSPLACE fellow.
• Angela: The desire for travelling, to meet and learn from people from all over the world, my nerdy and curious personality, the possibility to contribute to produce knowledge.
• Marta: the joy of learning in general and the creative part of research. I was also very inspired by two teachers I had. At high school, Carmiña Lecuona was a very contagious and passionate teacher in biology. Later, Berta Martín-Lopez at university is also a very inspiring person and researcher, and I was lucky enough to have her as supervisor in my masters.
• Kelli: I was interested in getting ‘under the skin’ of the sustainability slogans, buzzwords, and greenwashing that seems to flood the world of social entrepreneurship and consulting (where I spent most of my career).

What are the achievements (both professional and personal) you are most proud of?

• Anastasia: Making it through the PhD - well, almost, still a few weeks left; co-creating Once Upon the Future; realising my childhood dream of working and living in many different places, me who had hardly left my small village until I was 18 and my small country until I was 24. Keep crossing paths and making friends with people I admire.
• Lorena: Professional - understanding and accepting that the reality is complex and nuanced, and a researcher’s work is to capture that, instead of trying to offer simple answers. Personal - becoming a nomad, able to adapt to (almost) any location and learning to work with very different people, becoming more empathic and using empathy in work and everyday life.
• Angela: Feeling part of a learning community of scientists/practitioners, committed to improve the world, while supporting each other and changing academia from within. And knowing that I got thus far, earning every step of the way. My mom only went to primary school, my dad to middle school, my four brothers to high school; I grew up in a male-centred social environment, and a place where going to University is not at all common.
• Marta: Looking back to my research career I’m very proud of having followed my intuition which brought me more and more towards social sciences. It has been difficult as well as enriching and I think I’m more able to accept and understand life’s complexity now. I think this made me both a better person and a better scientist!
• Kelli: When I reflect on my path so far, I am proud that I founded and ran a successful fair trade cafe and community hub when I was just 24, that I then transitioned into consulting for sustainable economic development around the world. Most of all, however, I feel satisfied that I have been able to feed my curiosity and that I have stayed committed to living authentically and in line with my deepest motivations and values. I have chosen an unconventional path of living experimentally and exuberantly, which is not easy to do in the face of social expectations.

What have been the biggest challenges during your professional experience, if any?

• Anastasia: Finding my voice and trusting myself. Stop feeling horrible for every little mistake I ever made. Realising that I’m a big person with a loud voice and big dreams and have the right to them. Learning to reach out for help, not because I can’t make it on my own, but because with help we can do things even better and have so much more fun together.
• Lorena: Finishing my PhD - although I had promised myself that I would never force myself to finish something that makes me unhappy just because I have been educated ‘to finish what I start’. Finished, submitted, defended - now it’s done and I can move on, although still not convinced it has changed much for me.
• Angela: 1) The uncertainty that comes when you work in a precarious and yet very demanding environment like academia (including having to go abroad to earn a good salary and feel valued). 2) The feeling of ‘never being done’, having many projects pending - a PhD thesis, a paper, a joint endeavour - without knowing if it will ever have an impact on society.
• Marta: Trusting my path, stopping waiting for others to validate what I am doing or being overly self-critical. During the MSCA, when trips and field-wok responsibilities piled up, I had periods of distress that could have been softened with a more understanding and compassionate voice to myself. I’m still working on this but I feel I’ve grown a lot in this respect.
• Kelli: Starting over in a new field – social science research – at the age 40. It has been humbling and difficult to understand the complex institutional systems of academia and research, especially the tacit knowledge.

The MSCA allowed me to explore a new world and has supported my radically experimental research path

How has the MSCA impacted your life?

• Lorena: It has completely changed my life course through all the things I’ve learned (about living with uncertainty, contributing to a more sustainable future, etc.) and the people I met (through their way of working or their life philosophies).
• Angela: I have been in MSCA projects since my first research fellowship in 2013. I appreciate the freedom, ambition, mobility, experimentation, financial reward, and networking opportunities they allow. I learnt many things beyond writing academic papers, and I feel like a more versatile (and satisfied) professional thanks to that.
• Kelli: The MSCA allowed me to explore a new world – social science and applied academia – and has supported my radically experimental research path about the role of art in culture shifts towards deep sustainability.
• Marta: It has been such a transformative experience that I think I’m a different person now! For example, I would have never thought that I could write a children's book and now it’s my favourite outcome! I’m more and more proud of actions that seem banal but can reach the daily lives of people.

How would you spark a girl’s interest in science? What advice would you give to young women wishing to embark on a career as a researcher?

• Anastasia: I don’t think girls need a special way to spark their interest in science, they just need to feel that science is equally for them as for everyone else. So I’d show them other girls and women that do that and are happy and lead fulfilling lives professionally and personally (like us!). And I would advise them to reach out for help, to find women collaborators and women mentors, people that think like them and work like them.
• Lorena: Same, it’s not necessarily girls that need advice, but the surrounding ‘environments’ to better accommodate girls.
• Angela: I would tell them to: “Try, fail, and try again. Don’t be content with what they tell you to do, or how to do it, but find your own way into science (and life), through experience. Forge allies, with like-minded and like-hearted people. We don’t have time to wait for society to change for us; together we can break many visible and invisible barriers for women in academia.”
• Kelli: Women and girls have always been interested in science, but they do need supportive institutions, perhaps including structured mentorships and alternative (multiple) pathways to success (other than the ‘publish or perish’ reward structure). Covid has shined a light on how women take on responsibility in other domains, frequently at the expense of publication. Even in our research network, women took on more vital collaborative responsibilities and leadership roles that were often not visible in terms of rewards structures and acknowledgement.
• Marta: I couldn’t agree more with my fellows! Just adding that sharing these struggles with other women helps a lot. We need to share this burden to recognise that it’s structural, not our fault and stop being so critical and exigent with ourselves.

Further reading

• Learn more about Once upon the future, the book co-authored by Marta, Kelli, Anastasia, Ana and Lorena.
• Find out more about Re-imaginary.

Anastasia

• Learn more about Greek Women in Stem, to which Angela contributes as a Scientific Writer.
• Follow Anastasia on Linkedin.

Angela

• View Angela’s profile on Researchgate.
• Follow Angela on Twitter.

Lorena

• Follow Lorena on Linkedin.

Marta

• Follow Marta on Linkedin.
• View Marta’s profile on Google Scholar.

Kelli

• Find out about Kelli’s project Re-imaginary
• Follow Kelli’s project Re-imaginary on Twitter.

More MSCA interviews

• Read the interview with Dr Kirsty MacLeod, MSCA Individual Fellow at Lund University working in the field of ecology and evolution within the MSCA project EGERNIALIZARDS.
• Read the interviews with Eva Spišiaková, Lucia Fuchslueger and Marketa Schmidt Cernohorska, researchers of the MSCA project REWIRE – Reinforcing Women in Research.
• Read the interview with Professor Anne-Laure Mention, Director of the Global Business Innovation Enabling Capability Platform at RMIT University and coordinator of the MSCA projects OpenInnoTrain and EINST4INE.