Alumni AudioLab is a monthly podcast series where alumni of the OeAD talk about themselves and their research. The OeAD brings together researchers from all over the world and from different fields of research who spent part of their research career in Austria – some of them have even stayed here. In the Alumni AudioLab they tell their stories, talk about their scientific ambitions, their motivations and their personal backgrounds. It is an open format for all those who are not only interested in science as such but also in the people behind it.
https://oead.at/en/to-austria/alumni/audiolab
AAL_36 Alumni AudioLab with Tigran Keryan
Tigran Keryan grew up in the nearly untouched nature of Armenia. He grew into a life in harmony with nature at an early age, which went hand in hand with his studies of geography and his interest in sustainability issues.
After graduating, he worked for several years as a geography teacher and assistant to the principal. During this time he enrolled in his doctoral studies at the Armenian State Pedagogical University. He focuses on sustainable mountain development in Armenia and sustainability since then. In 2017 he came to Vienna and continued his studies at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (Boku). As part of the CaucaSusT project, which was funded by the APPEAR programme, he conducts transdisciplinary research in the context of sustainable tourism development in Georgia and Armenia. Tigran is convinced, that transdisciplinarity in science is the right way to address local challenges.
Transdisciplinarity means the cooperation not only between scientists from different disciplines, but also between science, students and the local population. Nevertheless, this approach is still neglected in today's science and funding landscape. This complex, albeit holistic, approach is often in contradiction to long-established frontal teaching and professors who stick to a teacher-student or researcher-researched subject dichotomy.
In this podcast he talks about his experience in transdisciplinary research, his career and his doctoral studies, which he successfully graduated from in spring 2021. But he also addresses the ongoing conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh in the Caucasus.