‘My Question Came Up‘ is one of 28 ‘Stories of Serendipity’ gathered from interviews with researchers for ‘SerenA – Chance Encounters in the Space of Ideas’. The stories aim to contribute to an understanding of Serendipity in research and across disciplines.

Mel Woods

 

The interviewee mentioned asking her lecturer for advice on how to revise for an exam on Global Security Challenges, which included wide-ranging topics from terrorism to politics. Her lecturer’s advice was to ‘read what you’re interested in, and I’m sure you going to answer the questions.’ The interviewee spent a weekend ‘surfing on the Internet’ and read articles on various topics, including the small arms trade and human trafficking in Afghanistan and piracy. She also came across an article where Osama Bin Laden blamed the US and other developed nations for climate change and thought that it would be ‘an interesting punch line for the exam if there is anything along those lines.’ This led the interviewee to read more about climate change (which was not in her course syllabus) and make links between climate change and piracy. She noted that climate change was killing off microscopic sea life, which was in turn killing off fish and putting fishermen out of business and some of these fishermen were turning to piracy to make ends meet. She noted that ‘climate change has caused these good people, fishermen, to go into basically bad people.’ On the exam, the interviewee was asked a question on how climate change influences global security issues and she was delighted that she had been ‘accidentally directed to’ climate change issues while researching potential angles for exam answers.

Interviews adapted by Stephann Makri

Interview narrated by Emma Bloomer

Illustrated by Johanna Basford

Edit by Schedule D Productions

Music by Gregor Fletcher

Devised and Directed by Mel Woods