Fellowship Focus

This project has a transdisciplinary and intersectional approach with the goal to share and translate scientific information about climate change with Mayan rural communities from Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. For that purpose, the project will consist of two phases. 

The first phase will involve searching the recent scientific information (last 5 years) about climate change in the region. We will prioritize open access journals and platforms, and mix these with interviews with local climate justice activists to have at least two different perspectives of the same problem.  

The second phase will be the translation processes of all that information for indigenous communities. The translation process in this context is complex because it implies finding ways to communicate information in accessible formats and not in occidental languages (Yucatecan Maya in this case). For this process, I will collaborate with Mayan translators and with the support of members of Múuch’ Xíimbal Mayan Assembly to share tools identified during the fellowship. 

These informational materials will consist of digitals infographics (about water, soil, rainforest) with a soft language in Spanish and Yucatecan Maya as an informative resource to share with different rural and urban indigenous communities through social media and websites. These infographics can also be printed and shared in deep rural communities where access to Wi-Fi or telephone coverage are limited or unavailable. This project will be a practical and specific way to downscale climate science to local levels and work for the smallest possible policy-makers and communities that are directly impacted by the consequences of climate change in their daily lives.

Bio

Rubén (Rub) Solís (they/them) comes from the Yucatan Peninsula, the Mayan and Caribbean zone of Mexico. They are a Marine Biologist from Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán (UADY) and have a Master’s in Natural Resource and Rural Development from El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (ECOSUR) in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas. They recently graduated as a PhD in Post-Colonialisms and Global Citizenship at the Center of Social Studies (CES) and Coimbra University, Portugal. Between May 2018 – July 2022, their PhD research was funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) of Portugal and the Social European Foundation. They have experience in research projects of different topics, each with a trans-disciplinary and gender approach, including: ecology of marine zones, climate change perceptions within indigenous populations, migration of artisanal fishermen inside Mexico, and health of people from Yucatecan coast. As an indigenous activist, they have had the opportunity to join different emancipatory movements from Mayan populations in southeast-Mexico.

Additional Links

Researchgate | Orcid