When I was accepted as a Laidlaw Scholar in March 2025, I couldn't have predicted how different my two summers would turn out to be. Year one was quiet and analytical: modelling the subjective barriers to public transport adoption as a complex network, supervised by Professor Michael Lengieza in Durham's Psychology Department. Year two was vibrant, hands-on, and unpredictable: six weeks in Kerala as a CraftHER Scholar, where I weaved and spun alongside Indigenous women. Looking back across all of it, this final post traces how those experiences fit together through the Laidlaw 3Cs: Change Maker Values, Character, and Capacities.
Change Maker Values: From "Who Is This Research For?" to a Line I Wouldn't Cross
My research proposal was explicit that the point of modelling transport barriers as a network wasn't academic for its own sake; it was meant to be accessible enough that a body like Durham County Council could derive some value. This informed the methodology itself, as Lengieza’s visual network approach was clearly accessible and immediately interpretable without the need for a statistics background. Before setting foot in Kerala, I had already realised the importance of intent in research.
Between the two summers, a session at our Durham leadership days on "Voluntourism vs Volunteering" extended this reflection to fieldwork: meaningful work in a foreign community doesn't impose outside assumptions, it builds a mutual relationship where skills and genuine needs actually meet. It stayed with me because it wasn't hypothetical; instead, it was a warning about the exact role I was about to step into.
That lens shaped my mini consulting projects in Kerala. Starting with Forest Post, I quickly realised that my knowledge of production processes and local industries was extremely limited. I hadn’t been invited to CraftHER to impose, but to learn. I worked alongside local artisans and was humbled by their long-honed skills in weaving, cooking, crocheting, and more. Through my time in Kerala, I put these lessons into practice by building a mutual relationship with the women I worked alongside.
Character: What Perseverance Looks Like When the Work Doesn't Go to Plan
If there's one thread running through both years, it's what I do when things don't work as planned.
Year one taught me this in a slower register. A six-week research schedule with fixed stages - ethical approval, literature review, survey design, data collection, modelling, write-up - leaves very little room for delay. Adding to the stress of the project, I had health issues and had emergency surgery at the beginning of my six-week window. Yet, following a recovery period, I managed to complete my research report, persevering through challenges.
Year two tested it far more visibly. In the final week of CraftHER, the night before my personal project presentation, four of the five garments I had commissioned came back unusable. I had built a full branding kit, pitch deck, and business plan for REN, and I still stumbled through my presentation, genuinely unsure whether it was worth presenting a brand that, as designed, might not survive contact with reality. What got me through wasn't confidence that I'd fixed the problem. It was accepting that I hadn’t and presenting the roadblock honestly instead of hiding it. I had never intended to launch a fully working brand in three days. I had only intended to build a starting point, and I had one: a vision, a concept, a direction, even if the production model needed rethinking.
Capacities: Skills I Didn't Know I'd Need Until I Needed Them
Year one built capacities I didn't expect a philosophy student to need: designing a survey instrument, applying social network analysis to messy subjective data, and translating that analysis into policy-relevant conclusions for an audience of non-specialists. It was my first real experience of a pilot study whose value depended entirely on whether someone outside the university could use it.
Year two stretched a completely different set of capacities. Working alongside SEWA Kerala on their palliative care and traditional livelihood initiatives, and with AWC on their work helping women into trades like masonry and carpentry, pushed my ability to communicate across contexts I had no prior fluency in. Giving "Take the Mic" talks - one drawing on transnational feminist philosophy, another built around Marilyn Waring's critique of GDP and the invisibility of women's labour - forced me to translate arguments I'd only ever written for an academic audience into something a room of strangers could engage with on the spot.
Closing Thought
I don't think this scholarship changed who I am so much as it made me more deliberate about it. A summer of disciplined research and a summer of working in the field with social enterprises in Kerala might seem different, but both came down to the same question: what do I do when the work doesn't go the way I designed it to? Through my scholarship, I have gained the courage to face imperfect situations without losing either my nerve or judgement.
Thank you to Chantelle, Kelci, Professor Lengieza, Asha, Durga, Preetha, my fellow scholars, and everyone at the Laidlaw Foundation who made both years of this possible. It hasn't been easy, but it's been an education in leadership that I am sure to carry with me long into the future.