A caring profession or two

I was recently asked to talk at a Careers’ Fair for students at Malmö International School. They wanted to hear from people who worked in caring professions. At first I was confused. Caring? To me, that implied nurses, social workers, teachers perhaps. But surely not researchers. “No,” they insisted. “Our students are interested in sustainability and confronting issues such as fast fashion and throwaway culture.”

Caring for our environment? Yes, I suppose that is caring work. And it is something that is top of my mind in most of my research work. I am a researcher but I am also an influencer and somewhat of an activist. I try to use my platform to make people aware of the problems of consumer society and to change their minds about how they should consume. And I use my research to do that too.

We live in society where consumption is sold as the answer to a wide range of problems. Even those caused by over-consumption. Got too much stuff? Buy a storage solution!

Against that backdrop, it is important to have people who point out the problems with consumption too. I’m happy that is a part of my job. And I’m happy that, in my role as an influencer, I can also show people how to have fun and be creative with non-consumption.

One of the students at the careers’ fair asked which part of my job I like best, the researching or the influencing. And I told him that, for me, one wouldn’t make sense without the other. I couldn’t use my channels to talk about over-consumption and anti-consumption without having the research knowledge to back it up. And I couldn’t find enough meaning in my research work unless I knew that my findings were reaching people and changing how they think about the world.

I feel so lucky that I get to do both these jobs. And maybe my joy will be infectious enough that some young people will be convinced to follow a similar path.