Dr. Asha de Vos

speaker

214 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 24 Jul

Dr. Asha de Vos’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Science Friday · Asha de Vos’ journey from deck hand to marine science leader · 24 Jul 2026 podcast

I think it's important for us to look back and reflect and see these moments, you know, and really appreciate them.

But yeah.

The vessel I was working on was an American-owned vessel and there were no other locals.

OK, and they were all foreigners from the global north.

And, you know, sitting in that instance, I realized that how little opportunity people like myself had.

The last time a research vessel had come to Sri Lanka was in 1983.

This was 2003.

Right.

So that's like our opportunities are so rare.

And I realized that even the previous vessel was all foreigners and working in my country.

And later down the line, I realized that was my first encounter with what I call parachute science.

So parachute science is basically where people in this instance come from the global north to countries like mine in the global south, which are exotic in many ways with conservation challenges and do work and leave without any investment in people on the ground or local infrastructure.

And what happens in that situation is that the project is designed around the priorities and the interests of the outsider, but not the priorities on the ground.

And because the outsider is coming in with the resources like funding, there's an unequal power imbalance between those from outside and then on the ground.

And what happens is then the person who, the researcher from outside who comes and does the work, their career tends to skyrocket because they made these discoveries in these exotic places.

But

Structurally, it just doesn't work.

It's unsustainable because people on the ground don't have that expertise.

And I think there's so much local talent if we create the opportunities because talent is equally distributed while opportunity is not.

And I think there are a lot of capable people who can lead and do this research.

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