Brian Gialketsis SERQueer Scholarship Year in Review 2021

My mother would always tell me “your tears are prayers to the ancestors, don’t be afraid to feel your pain, it’s better to let go”. These reminders were important to me as I was someone that had difficulty sitting with my emotions especially during troubled times. 

I see my interest in studying people’s emotional responses to climate change as part of that broader scholarly frame, one that sees mental health as collective and not just individual, and casts healing as personal and, at the same time, a communal and political project.

I am still working almost full-time to support my family, however, this time things are different because I am also securing a career for myself in a few years. I am so happy and forever thankful for the experiences I had because they made me resilient to strive for a better tomorrow.

Sources of comfort and joy during my pandemic year, and always: . . . Accepting help when I need it. No longer allowing my ability to accomplish things alone to be an internal metric of my worth. Remembering that for me scholarship is fundamentally an act of love, that learning is relational, that good philosophy can and should be healing. Tending to my houseplants and, for the first time in my life, watching them thrive.