Really appreciate you @mal_graham🔸 thinking out loud on this. Watching from Uganda, I totally get the frustration the US climate feels increasingly hostile to science and progressive work like wild animal welfare. So yeah, shifting more focus to the UK/EU makes sense, especially if it helps stabilize research and morale. That said, if you’re already rethinking geography and community building, I’d gently suggest looking beyond the usual Global North pivots. Regions like East Africa are incredibly underrepresented but ecologically critical and honestly, there’s a small but growing base of people here hungry to build this field with proper support. If there’s ever a window to make this movement more global and future-proof, it might be now. Happy to chat more if useful.
Thank you for your comment! It’s actually a topic of quite a lot of discussion for us, so I would love to connect on it. I’ll send you a DM soon.
Just for context, the main reason I’ve felt a little constrained to the US/UK context is due to comparative advantage considerations, such as having staff who are primarily based in those countries/speaking English as our organizational common tongue/being most familiar with those academic communities, etc.
I definitely think the WAW community, in general, should be investing much more outside of just US/UK/EU—but am less sure whether it makes sense for WAI to do so, given our existing investments/strengths. But I could be convinced otherwise!
Even if we keep our main focus in the US/UK, I’d be very interested in hearing more about how WAI might be able to support the “people hungry to build the field” in other countries, so that could be another thing to discuss.
Really appreciate you @mal_graham🔸 thinking out loud on this. Watching from Uganda, I totally get the frustration the US climate feels increasingly hostile to science and progressive work like wild animal welfare. So yeah, shifting more focus to the UK/EU makes sense, especially if it helps stabilize research and morale. That said, if you’re already rethinking geography and community building, I’d gently suggest looking beyond the usual Global North pivots. Regions like East Africa are incredibly underrepresented but ecologically critical and honestly, there’s a small but growing base of people here hungry to build this field with proper support. If there’s ever a window to make this movement more global and future-proof, it might be now. Happy to chat more if useful.
Thank you for your comment! It’s actually a topic of quite a lot of discussion for us, so I would love to connect on it. I’ll send you a DM soon.
Just for context, the main reason I’ve felt a little constrained to the US/UK context is due to comparative advantage considerations, such as having staff who are primarily based in those countries/speaking English as our organizational common tongue/being most familiar with those academic communities, etc.
I definitely think the WAW community, in general, should be investing much more outside of just US/UK/EU—but am less sure whether it makes sense for WAI to do so, given our existing investments/strengths. But I could be convinced otherwise!
Even if we keep our main focus in the US/UK, I’d be very interested in hearing more about how WAI might be able to support the “people hungry to build the field” in other countries, so that could be another thing to discuss.