 So Haya, how are you? Thank you so much for agreeing to be interviewed for this. I'm good. Thank you so much for asking. So should we get started? Do you want to tell me a bit about yourself? Sure. I'm Smriti Svaya. I am based in Hong Kong, so I'm a distance PhD student and I'm actually split between SCI York and the Education Department at the University of York in their science education research group. So I get to straddle these two lovely departments and learn a lot from each. They each have their strengths and expertise, so I've been really enjoying that learning across the two. And before I became a PhD student though, I have been a teacher at schools here in Hong Kong for 13 years, so that's partly why I'm also still in Hong Kong to do my PhD because my research is based here and it's about education in Hong Kong, which is the field that I'm really interested in. So what specifically are you researching for your PhD? So I'm taking a look at the appetite that secondary school students have for environmental activism and I'm especially looking at it through an experiential education approach called citizen science and it's something that has only really started in Hong Kong I'd say seven and a half or eight years ago and it's not even that pervasive across the schools. So I was quite keen to test as much as one can test the impact of these kinds of experiences on students in a bit more of a qualitative and quantitative way because I've been trying to incorporate citizen science in my teaching for a number of years and anecdotally I could see the impact but when I was looking into the research there hasn't been that much done about it even globally so I was quite keen just to find out more and it's never been done in Hong Kong so I was quite keen to just answer a burning question of my own. At the end of the day I think teachers just want to be better teachers so that what they teach and how they teach has a greater impact on their students so that's where the whole yeah I'd say the source came from in terms of the question and why I'm doing what I'm doing. That's really interesting what did you study previously to then get to the point where you're now doing a PhD? Oh it was a bit wonky actually I never wanted to be a teacher that might be a common story for some teachers. I was really keen on research I was a geography science kind of kid and so I did geology as my undergrad in California and was really interested in a lot of the earthquakes that were happening there so I then did my master's in Hong Kong U the University of Hong Kong but I've always been a mountain person so I found out that they had a Tibet research team so I was like yes let me go so my master's was about earthquakes in Tibet and you know I was kind of happy down the research road but then there's some stuff that happened in the news that upset me a lot and it had nothing to do with earthquakes and it was more it got me questioning what the point of my research was and if I was thinking about doing more research in that field would it have any kind of impact and be helpful to society and my conclusion at that time was that I don't think so and so I thought well what would be useful and at the same time I had to do a lot of the field courses for undergrad students as a master's student we would lead those and I realized I enjoyed working with young people in the field so I'm a big outdoorsy kind of person and so suddenly I was realizing wait I think I like this thing that I'm just slowly discovering and so then I decided maybe I'll go get a teaching degree and so that's where the teaching thing came from so I initially was doing a lot of science teaching and then geography teaching a lot of environmental education so I was able to kind of nerd out with my students about earthquakes and geology and rocks as much as I could but then I also had to bring in all these other things which has been a lot of fun so that's kind of the 13 years of teaching suddenly flew by and I still try to do as much field-based work as possible which then led to the citizen science and then getting me to question well how impactful is it does it change student values towards the environment does it change their behavior are they becoming a little bit more active with being mindful and wanting to protect the environment so all these kinds of questions kind of came from there so it was a bit mishmash and windy but I eventually got here amazing so the final bit of the the get-to-know-you section of this is the most important um what is your favorite color my favorite color oh uh gosh dang it it's so I don't know it's like a greeny bluey mix is there I don't know what the spectrum of colors is but yeah it's like a mishmash of green and blue okay okay right we'll go back to the um the environmental based question I like the the most important being the color stuff so what attracted you to sei in the first place what made you apply for for this phd program well sei I've been sort of tracking sei for a little while partly because even in my teaching we're always looking for resources with information about well a lot of environmental information from from the geography side of teaching but the there was reports and data and a lot of global data too that was coming out so I was introduced to sei that way and I was thinking there is this organization that seems very trustworthy in terms of data collection and the kind of interpretations they're doing but also the way they're applying the information that they have to create change that's positive for people in the planet and there's not too many organizations that do that it seems effectively maybe is another adjective I should add so they were on my radar but I had no clue about phd opportunities and it only happened much later when I was looking into citizen science and trying to understand well what do we know about the impact of it where I then found out that there were a particular researcher or a few researchers in that world and they were doing really good work and it was coming out of seio and I was like hey wait a second I I've heard of this group before and they did really cool stuff and wow they have you know people working on citizen science and there's a phd opportunity so I was just thinking wow these worlds are colliding really and so I think I got really lucky that way recognizing that they're doing work that actually has real impact and a lot of times it's not as an outside researcher kind of coming in they build a lot of relationships with people locally and often let them lead that kind of project which I especially with the whole citizen science aspect and interest that I have local voice is is really important to me it's kind of the same reason why I think student voice is also really important in anything that teachers ever do or schools ever do so that philosophy was also something that connected with my philosophy and I I valued that so I think there's some similar values and so I appreciate their approach and I like the impact that it can have and they're very humble about it but also very explicit and hopeful so all of those things I thought were were fitting in with what my hopes and vision was too nice so what's your experience been like studying here so far I have pretty I have stepped foot once into the seio office and literally that was for about five minutes and I realized that the person I was supposed to meet was sick that day and I never managed to meet them and so I basically walked in and then walked out once I found out that so I physically don't have much of an experience there other than just being in the building for some minutes but being a distance learner I I think and this was pre-covid I had chosen to be a distance learner so things were I think not as easy as they are now because everybody has to live and work and study online but I have to say that as soon as I kind of joined the SCI family I was suddenly part of so many emails that was all about community building and even though we physically never seen each other it suddenly felt like a little family and there were some people especially from the admin side who went out of their way to make me feel super comfortable check in with me on a weekly basis invite me to talk at speed talks and just get to know me too just little itty bitty things like that so I thought that was really precious and help to just really like you get thrown into the deep end but this was like a nice cushion to have and on your entire journey and nothing has changed in fact it's gotten even cozier and there's more ways to engage and participate so it feels it feels really special I've never had anything like that in the previous three degrees that I've done at three different universities so this was very different very very unique that's really nice to hear actually yeah has that been a um a standout experience for you standout experience um uh I don't know it would be hard to say partly because I've not been able to join some of the uh the very social things because those tend to happen UK evening times which ends up being often my 2am 3am so I don't end up joining those but I hear afterwards that they're a heck of a lot of fun and so I know I kind of missed out but there's other uh small opportunities uh I mean I think they had there was the Christmas one that I was able to join which had a bunch of different games really really wacky kind of games that I'd never thought you could do over zoom uh I thought they were really clever and so that was a lot of fun a lot of giggling a lot of silliness I'd say yeah that but I hear there's lots of those so I'm I'm really appreciative that I managed to join that one they had a at a friendlier time zone for me so I really appreciated that and actually I should say there are lots of times when they check in with those of us who are in different parts of the world about can we join and I thought that inclusivity was was special so like we're not forgotten even though we're not there yeah that's really nice so if you were to summarize SCI in three words what would they be oh goodness and I mean this in the best way possible there's an eccentricity about them about people in this group um oh wait dang it I was going to use a transformers quote of more than meets the eye but that's more than three words uh dang it um okay so so there's yeah there's an eccentricity but then um there's a there's a humility I would say as well and um and yeah great intelligence those three things I'd say yeah nice so the the final thing we're going to be doing is um if you were speaking to somebody who was thinking about applying to do a phd here what would you say to them I would say that would be a very smart choice to to do that there is tremendous support from not only your supervisor if you have just the one although I hear that many people have more than one I've got more than one but in a different department but there's a lot of breadth as well as depth in SCI and I find that there's a lot of willingness to help you in that journey whether it is with maybe quantitative skills or qualitative skills that are more maybe methodological or analytical there's a lot of help and it's not just coming from the the experts but it's also coming from the at the postdocs and then other phd students there's a lot of communities that are really helping in all sorts of ways and not just the sort of technical side of the phd but even the social emotional side of trying to get through a project that can hit a lot of bumpy roads especially during COVID times so I feel like in the SCI's would would be the you know the perfect family to do a phd and stumble along the journey and figure it out as you go along so I think it would be a smart choice to to consider SCI as the place to do the phd so would you have any advice for those applying is there anything that they really need to know well it wouldn't hurt to really have a good sense of your own project whatever that research question is and in a way to I mean I know you have to write a bit of a proposal and have as much in the proposal as possible I'd say one of the things especially perhaps in the last two years what that's taught us is to have plan B's and maybe plan C's and to have thought about that and even have some kind of mitigation plan because that also shows your potential supervisor that you're thinking about how to be adaptive and that shows some innovative thinking that shows some creative problem solving and these are the kinds of skills that you'll need as you do your phd anyway so if because I think everyone generally who applies has the basic here's my question here my general methods I would use here's possibly the way I will analyze it and maybe here's some literature about the topic but if you can show that if things go wrong because likely things won't go perfectly then here's what I'm going to do about it and those kinds of skills are I think going to put one in good stead that's really good really good advice um these are all the questions I have for you right now is there anything else that you would like to mention anything else you think we've missed out um I mean hopefully everything can be face-to-face and physical again and it seems like this I mean SEI as part of the Environment Geography Department it's it's a great space because SEI is such an amazing culture and then even the Environment Geography Department has a great culture it's almost like you're part of two worlds that are happily co-existing and mingling together and it makes for such a supportive environment that your PhD experience would be just so enriched by it so you know if if people are questioning whether or not this would be a good decision I would say you don't even have to question it's just a matter of well just be open to the wonderful people that are part of SEI and in the Environment Geography Department and you'd yeah I'd say you'd be hard-pressed to ever find anything other than just really positive meaningful relationships and experiences so yeah hopefully it can be face-to-face because I hear I'm missing out on some really cool things like picnics and hey who's some amazing goose out there I don't know there's all these cool things and mysteries to solve so one day hopefully I'll even get a chance to be there but I think those who get in are super lucky so apply okay thank you very much you've been amazing oh you're very welcome thanks again Lucy