Geological erosion specialist Amanda Henck Schmidt has always valued collaboration in her work. But it wasn’t until she embarked on a project in Cuba that she discovered what truly collaborative research can look like.
In recent years, there’s been a shift in Cuba from conventional to organic agriculture. Amanda set out to study how this might have affected erosion rates in the country, having previously studied how government policy affected geology China.
Among the research community in Cuba, there’s a strong sense that foreign scientists shouldn’t simply come into the country and ‘take’ knowledge away. So Cuban academics have established a much more give/take process, ensuring that any foreign research projects create opportunities for local scientists to train, publish and participate in a fair way.
Amanda, Paul, and Cuban collaborator Alejandro at a sample site in central Cuba. Photographs by Joshua Brown.
Amanda and Alejandro prepare to take a sample.
On the first day of the field campaign in Cienfuegos, Amanda meets Hector, Rita, and Aniel to strategize.
Amanda teaches Cuban collaborator Victor to measure channel dimensions and water velocity in order to estimate discharge in the river.
Amanda’s in no doubt that this collaborative approach enriched her work. Her research teams were an equal split of Americans and Cubans, with experts from many different specialties involved in conversations. This enabled her to forge fruitful relationships with collaborators that continue today.
Finding collaborators for her project in the first place wasn’t easy. Amanda struggled to reach Cuban researchers via email, and those she did connect with didn’t match the specialisms she was looking for. In the end, it was ResearchGate that facilitated her connecting with her collaborators, which in turn helped her submit her proposal in the timeframe she was aiming for.
For the past 10 years, Amanda’s been part of the geology department at Oberlin College, a small undergrad-only liberal arts college in Overland, Ohio. She splits her time between teaching and research. Specifically, she studies how the landscape shapes decisions people make about land use and how people alter the environments they live in. This work is done in collaboration with Paul Biermann at the University of Vermont.
In 2019, Amanda received a Fulbright Scholar Fellowship and was set to spend a year doing research in China. Alongside collaborators from the University of Washington, her plan was to study a mountain valley where she had discovered unusual clay sediments suggesting the existence of a large lake thousands of years ago. This work was sadly cut short by COVID-19. Amanda’s been back in the USA since March 2020, where she’s been juggling homeschooling with planning for the next academic year.
