In a world facing profound ecological, social, and epistemological challenges, the need for open, collaborative, and interdisciplinary research is more urgent than ever. The YERUN Research Mobility Awards are designed to support this very mission — empowering early-career and mid-career researchers across Europe to explore new perspectives, deepen their work, and build lasting academic connections.
In this 5th edition of YRMA Voices, we turn to the humanities, with a joint interview featuring Adrián Santamaría Pérez and Dr. Jesús Pinto, researchers from the Ecological Humanities group (GHECO) at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. They used the award to initiate a meaningful collaboration with the University of Stirling, organising an international workshop and developing an ambitious interdisciplinary research agenda focused on ecological justice, temporality, and the Anthropocene.
Their story offers a compelling example of how research mobility can help forge not just individual growth, but also collective inquiry into some of the most pressing issues of our time.
What impact did the YERUN Research Mobility Award have on your research and professional development?
First, the experience we can transmit here could be slightly different from other Senior academics and professors -we are going to talk from the point of view of pre-doctoral researchers who were just starting their academic career (Jesús had his doctorate a year ago, and Adrián is about to have it too). From this point of view, the YERUN Research Mobility Award was an opportunity to further internationalise our profile as scholars dedicated to the humanities and, more specifically, to philosophy. From our research group in Ecological Humanities (GHECO) at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, committed to study of the socioecological crisis we are facing, we have always believed that the best research is the one that is done openly, inter-disciplinary and in plural, collaborating with other entities (both from the university and civil society).
The YERUN Research Mobility Award was an opportunity for the two of us to mainly collaborate with two researchers (Professor Andrea Schapper and Professor Holger Nehring from the Centre for Policy, Conflict and Co-operation Research at the University of Stirling) in order to think and discuss about issues that united us all: the environmental crisis, ecological justice, the question of temporality in the Anthropocene… Thanks to the double award we obtained, we were able to organise a workshop on ecological justice and time at the University of Stirling in May 2023 in a hybrid format (there is a chronicle published in English in the prestigious Spanish philosophy journal “Bajo Palabra”; please see pages 521-523: https://revistas.uam.es/bajopalabra/issue/view/1219/837). There we brought together researchers from different national (both from the Global North and South) and disciplinary (legal sciences, sociology, mathematics, ecology, philosophy, history…) backgrounds, where we also addressed a wide range of issues -from the ecological and social impact of Artificial Intelligence to the reparation technologies of the Williche people, to the gamification of decision-making linked to climate justice. In addition, the grant enabled us to enjoy a two-week research stay at the aforementioned university, which allowed us to enrich our pre-doctoral research in the field of ecological humanities with the insights of our tutors there.
In short, thanks to the YERUN Research Mobility Award we had the opportunity to connect with researchers from different parts of the world. In addition, it was crucial in terms of improving our knowledge of leadership skills and the organisation of academic events.
Can you share a memorable moment or highlight from your mobility experience?
We would certainly highlight the two days in which the workshop “Environmental Justice and Time” took place. First, because it was a condensation of several months of work between Professors Nehring and Schapper and both of us. Months in which we had several online meetings and we specified the theme of our workshop, set the dates in which it was going to take place, wrote the call for abstracts (and disseminated it through social networks and academic channels), review the numerous proposals that received and organised the timetable for the event. In May 2023, we found ourselves at the University of Stirling, watching how different researchers gave feedback on each other presentations, and how the format we chose (presentation-reply) gave rise to very long discussions on the most diverse issues, such as slow violence or the rights of nature (in the case of those who attended the event in person, the dialectic exchanges were even prolonged during the coffee breaks and meals!). It was a truly enriching experience…
Did the collaboration initiated through the award lead to any ongoing partnerships or follow-up projects?
One of the outcomes of the collaboration with Professors Schapper and Nehring of the University of Stirling resulted from the Environmental Justice and Time workshop. At the end of it, some of us came to the conclusion that it would be highly desirable to extend some of the discussions that took place there into a special issue of a high-impact journal in the field of humanities and social sciences. During our two-week stay after the workshop, we began a collaboration that is still going on today, in which we defined more specifically the theme of the special issue, and initiated contact with the journal Environmental Values, whose editors were very interested in our proposal. Currently, some of the contributions are still in the peer review process, so… we hope to inform you shortly of the final publication of the monograph, the result of this follow-up project!
What advice would you give to researchers considering applying for the YERUN Research Mobility Awards?
In short, don’t think twice, especially if you are at the same academic stage as we were then! This award will allow you to enrich your perspective with the research from other places, sensibilities and backgrounds, as well as to organise workshops, seminars and other academic events that will prepare you not only as a researcher, but also as scholar with an increasing know-how in leadership and group management. Not to mention how this award works as a good opportunity to learn from other universities’ research, teaching and organising culture, which in pre-doctoral stage is a highly enriching experience.
We fully agree with the spirit of the YERUN network: the contemporary university must rise to the great problems and challenges the world, in general, and Europe, in particular, are facing. We believe there is no better way to do this than through the crossover and dialogue among disciplines, as well as scholars from different regions of the globe. Our current time suffers from a major epistemological problem: myopia, a huge tendency to specialisation, a danger from which we were warned by great 20th century thinkers such as Alfred North Whitehead, or, in the Spanish context, Antonio Machado and Ortega y Gasset. The values of collaboration and trans- and interdisciplinarity are key to minimally correcting it.
Thank you, Adrian and Jesús!
The experience of Adrián Santamaría Pérez and Dr. Pinto shows how the YERUN Research Mobility Award can serve as a crucial stepping stone in the early stages of an academic career. Their mobility not only expanded their individual research perspectives, but also resulted in concrete outcomes — from organising an international workshop to launching a special journal issue on environmental justice and time.
Their story reflects the value of interdisciplinary exchange and international collaboration, especially for young scholars.
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Short Bios:
Adrián Santamaría is a PhD student in the Department of Philosophy at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, where he researches on the role of philosophy in higher education in the face of the ecosocial crisis. He holds a Master’s degree in Philosophical Criticism and Argumentation (UAM, 2019). In the last years, he has taught in the Philosophy Degree, in subjects such as: Ethics, Political Philosophy, Philosophy and the Human Condition and History of Modern Philosophy. He has been a visiting researcher at the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts (USA); as well as at the Universidad Nacional del Litoral (Argentina), Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium) and Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (Brazil). He also made a short research stay at the University of Stirling thanks to the YERUN programme.
Dr. Jesús Pinto Freyre has a PhD in Philosophy with a thesis on violence in the Spanish Civil War from the intellectuals of the 1970s generation. He has completed a doctoral stay at Selwyn College (Cambridge University) in the United Kingdom and another at the University of Stirling (thanks to the YERUN programme) and Universidad Nacional del Litoral (thanks to the Speak4Nature project) and has participated in several interventions in national and international conferences in Spain and other countries, and publications in various journals (many of them in collaboration with Adrián Santamaría Pérez). His interests and lines of research include studies in political philosophy on violence, memory, the Civil War and contemporary Spanish thought, as well as inquiries into technology, interdependence and eco-dependence and other associated problems in the context of the ecosocial crisis. He has also worked on philosophical thought on nursing and on the critique of transhumanism.
