Graduate Summer Fellows Participate in Session on Using Humor to Communicate About the Future

Over the past two weeks, the Pardee Center Graduate Summer Fellows have had virtual lunch discussions with Prof. Muhammad H. Zaman and Prof. Lucy Hutyra, and participated in an interactive “cartoonathon” with Visiting Research Fellows Pablo Suarez and Janot Mendler de Suarez exploring the use of humor to better communicate about the future.

On June 3, Prof. Zaman, a Pardee Center Faculty Associate, joined the Fellows for a wide-ranging conversation touching on the future of higher education in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, his current research on refugees and internally displaced persons, and his most recent book, Biography of Resistance: The Epic Battle Between People and Pathogens.

On June 10, Prof. Hutyra, a Pardee Center Faculty Research Fellow, discussed her background and career path, the value of the Summer Fellows program’s interdisciplinary approach, and her ongoing work on air pollution, urban heat islands, and greenhouse gas emissions in cities.

During the “cartoonathon,” which took place on June 8, the Fellows were asked to react to a series of cartoons and discuss how compelling each was for having a conversation about the future, specifically in relation to their own summer research projects. They were then asked to react to a second series of cartoons in collaboration with a partner and negotiate which cartoons were most compelling, which often led to very different results.

“There may be better ways than the traditional research formula — pre- and post-surveys — of collecting authentic data on how people make decisions,” said Mendler de Suarez. “That’s one of the areas that we think is ripe for further research.”

The session was a precursor to an upcoming public event co-hosted by the Pardee Center and the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre on July 17. The virtual event will center around the book launch for The Good Ancestor: How to Think Long Term in a Short-Term World by Roman Krznaric. More details will be available soon. 

Learn more about this year’s Fellows and their research projects.