{"id":1080,"date":"2020-10-30T08:21:35","date_gmt":"2020-10-30T08:21:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/psychology\/?p=1080"},"modified":"2020-10-31T12:00:38","modified_gmt":"2020-10-31T12:00:38","slug":"do-you-know-what-im-thinking-a-journey-from-mozambique-to-sussex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/psychology\/2020\/10\/30\/do-you-know-what-im-thinking-a-journey-from-mozambique-to-sussex\/","title":{"rendered":"Do you know what I’m thinking? – a Journey from Mozambique to Sussex"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Paloma Manguele is a PhD student in the Attention Lab<\/a>. She studies mind wandering, a concept she is cautious to translate into her first language, Portuguese. \u201cI guess the word could be \u2018divaga\u00e7ao\u2019 \u2013 digression \u2013 but not exactly,\u201d she explains. There are not many studies about mind wandering in Portuguese. In fact, there are only a few people researching mind wandering around the world. One of them is her supervisor, Dr Sophie Forster<\/a>, here at Sussex. Paloma\u2019s research involves cutting edge neuroscience techniques such as functional neuroimaging and electrophysiology to understand the brain underpinnings of spontaneous thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paloma\u2019s interest in Neuroscience started in Mozambique when she had just come back from completing a year of postgraduate studies in Norway, and she had secured a teaching position at the Eduardo Mondlane University<\/a>, a very esteem institution in her country. She thought she would be teaching Clinical Psychology, her undergrad specialisation, but instead, they asked her to teach Neuropsychology and, now from a teacher\u2019s perspective, she fell in love with the subject. \u201cI was teaching about the brain, this amazing device that exists in the Universe, which is so beautiful and fits in our hands. I just wanted to know it more and more.\u201d At the same time, she was also working at the University\u2019s Centre for Studies and Psychological Support providing counselling to students: \u201cI noticed that many of the students’ psychological problems came from the way they perceived the world and how they thought. A bit in line with cognitive theories of mental health. I was very interested in this aspect, why do we think the way we do and how the contents of our thoughts can affect our mental health.\u201d Cognitive Neuroscience was calling her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDo you know what I\u2019m thinking,\u201d Paloma would be continuously asked in Mozambique. Obviously not, but what if we could somehow predict or infer what people are thinking? What tools would we need? \u201cI was thinking a lot about spontaneous thoughts and how intrusive they are. How they just pop in our minds when you least expect them and sometimes distract us from whatever we\u2019re doing. So, I was leaning towards mind wandering, although at the time I didn\u2019t even know there was a term for it.\u201d And this is how the idea for her PhD started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paloma arrived at Sussex in May 2017, on Neuroscience Day, and she went straight to attend the annual conference organised by Sussex Neuroscience<\/a>. When Paloma got into the lecture theatre, she realised she was the only Black person in the large room and started doubting whether she belonged there. But the next day her lab mates took her out for a coffee and a hot chocolate at the Bridge Caf\u00e9, and despite the usual awkwardness of meeting people for the first time, they made her feel welcome and part of the community. It\u2019s with a smile that she tells me: \u201cWe\u2019re lab sisters now, we support each other\u201d. And she continues: \u201cEven during the lockdown, apart from lab meetings, we kept having our \u2018sister\u2019s meetings\u2019 over Zoom, sometimes just to know how each other was doing and to offer help.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, three years in she\u2019s still the only Black PhD student at the School of Psychology. \u201cI wonder about that. A percentage of the British population is Black. I\u2019ve taught Black students in the undergraduate and masters courses here. How come I\u2019m still the only Black PhD student? Where do those UG and MSc students go? Where are the British and the international Black students? Wouldn\u2019t they want to continue to a PhD in Psychology and Neuroscience?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Paloma adjusting the electrodes of a participants<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The lack of diversity in academia goes beyond a simple problem of representation. It has a real impact on research. On the first year of PhD, Paloma volunteered in an EEG experiment ran by one of her lab mates. EEG stands for electroencephalography, and it uses electrodes placed on the scalp of the participant to record electrical activity in the brain. Even though at the time Paloma had short hair, the electrodes could not reach her scalp well enough to create good impedance, which is the measure of how good the electrical signal is, so her data had to be discarded. At first, Paloma thought that she was the problem, but when she started running her experiments, she discovered the same pattern with other Black participants. She realised that EEG electrodes were designed with White people\u2019s hair in mind, and they didn\u2019t work as well with her coarse hair. This means that even if researchers are not being purposefully racist, the results will be biased because the data from Black participants will have to be discarded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI want to take Neuroscience to Mozambique because it\u2019s not a field there yet and EEG is a very affordable way of conducting neuroscience experiments to answer the questions I\u2019m interested in,\u201d Paloma explains. \u201cIt\u2019s more affordable than fMRI and other techniques, but the way it\u2019s currently designed I cannot use it with Black people, who are the majority in Mozambique. The same way science developed EEG with White people\u2019s hair in mind, we can design a similar instrument that can be adapted to other types of hair. This goes back to taking it seriously and doing actual research to figure out what works, what doesn\u2019t, and how it can be fixed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wanted to know Paloma\u2019s opinion about being the only Black PhD student in the School of Psychology and what we could do to encourage other Black students to continue to postgraduate studies. This is what she told me:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why do you think Black students don\u2019t continue their studies into a PhD? <\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve never looked at myself as a minority. I come from a country where I am the majority, therefore I do not have racism always on my mind. When I came here and realised that I was the only Black PhD student, it was quite a shock. I knew I was coming to the UK and I didn\u2019t expect there would be many of us, but I was not expecting the underrepresentation to be so shocking. Of course, I should not be expecting for all my mentors to be Black or female, but it would be good if I could have the opportunity to see another Black person in Neuroscience, Cognitive Science or Psychology just to be able to look and think \u2018yes, what I\u2019m doing is possible for people who look like me\u2019. It would have been important. I think not having Black people as academic staff could make the students a bit shy to apply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started teaching as a doctoral tutor, and I feel that I kind of have this role of being \u2018the Black teacher\u2019 and I hope it does make a little difference for some of the BAME students. For most of my PhD, I\u2019ve also taught Clinical Psychology at the International Summer School<\/a> and the American students are the most vocal ones. They would tell me directly how important it had been for them to find a person from Africa teaching in England. So even if I didn\u2019t have that referent, I can be that person for other minority students. I really hope it helps inspire them to apply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What can we do to encourage and support more Black students into academia?<\/strong> <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We need to do what we do best: research, rigorous research. Because, unfortunately, one Black person can only speak about their own experience and it\u2019s very personal. To understand what the shared experience is, we need to do some research and learn how to categorise things. Conversations like this are a small step, but we need to think on a bigger scale. There are a lot of assumptions on what it means to be a Black student. Those assumptions must be rigorously tested for meaningful changes to occur. They can be tested the same way we test our other research questions, with funding, with research teams, and with collaborations. It should not be the sole role of people within the group to test these assumptions. Racism exists, we live with it, but it impacts society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also need to address our personal biases more assertively, in our modules, and maybe even in our lab meetings. My lab does that. We must talk about it. For example, in a school seminar (where I was again the only Black person in the room), someone showed faces of people and categorised them in groups according to their power and, unintendingly (I hope) pointed out that probably some faces would be considered as having less authority in a context of teaching, and those happened to be Black and female ones. Well, I am a Black female teacher in the UK, and I\u2019ve never imagined myself as having less authority than my White counterparts, or when I was teaching in Mozambique. Anyways, I would be delighted to see more research on this before a person makes assumptions and carries them to a seminar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you have any advice for Black students who are thinking of doing a PhD?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I would like to tell BAME students not to be scared, that this path is open to them too. That it might not be the easiest thing, but it is okay, we can do it anyway. Black people have come a long way in history, despite insurmountable circumstances. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paloma is currently focusing on writing up her thesis, to submit in a few months. But she already has some plans for the future: last academic year she received a grant from the British Experimental Psychology Society to carry out cross-cultural research on mind wandering in Queen\u2019s University Belfast and in Mozambique. They had to postpone it due to Covid-19, but Paloma hopes to resume it once the pandemic is over and extend it to include children. She\u2019s also applying for post-doctoral funding with her supervisor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paloma Manguele is a PhD student under the supervision of Dr Sophie Forster<\/a>. She is also a member of the Sussex Attention Lab<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Find out more about our research on<\/em> Cognitive Neuroscience<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paloma Manguele is a PhD student in the Attention Lab. She studies mind wandering, a concept she is cautious to translate into her first language, Portuguese. \u201cI guess the word could be \u2018divaga\u00e7ao\u2019 \u2013 digression \u2013 but not exactly,\u201d she…<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more ›<\/a><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":156,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[98528],"tags":[168166,91187,168176,97941],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pafdEV-hq","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1383,"url":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/psychology\/2021\/09\/21\/meet-professor-nicola-yuill\/","url_meta":{"origin":1080,"position":0},"title":"Meet Professor Nicola Yuill","date":"September 21, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Prof Nicola Yuill personifies the interdisciplinary spirit that has always been at the core of Sussex. Whether as a student or as a lecturer, she has been part of all the Psychology departments that historically spread across three different Schools at Sussex.\u00a0Her current research\u00a0is the result of this background, with\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "History of Psychology at Sussex"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/psychology\/files\/2021\/07\/Nicola-Yuill.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":94,"url":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/psychology\/2015\/11\/02\/unexpected\/","url_meta":{"origin":1080,"position":1},"title":"Unexpected","date":"November 2, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"By Hause Lin \u00a0 Many assigned readings for most modules seemed uninteresting at best. Two papers in particular\u2014White's (1967) \u201cThe historical roots of our ecologic crisis\u201d and Hardin's (1968) \u201cThe tragedy of the commons\u201d\u2014come instantly to mind. These titles just sound dull and mind-numbing, especially to a first-year undergraduate. Till\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Alumni\"","img":{"alt_text":"Undergraduate Awards at Farmleigh House and Estate. 20 November 2014 ","src":"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/psychology\/files\/2015\/10\/Hause-300x200.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":429,"url":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/psychology\/2017\/08\/14\/my-time-on-work-experience-in-the-school-of-psychology-at-the-university-of-sussex\/","url_meta":{"origin":1080,"position":2},"title":"My Time on Work Experience in the School of Psychology at the University of Sussex","date":"August 14, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"By Toby Killeen Hi! I am Toby and I\u2019m a 15 year old schoolboy doing work experience in the School of Psychology at the University of Sussex. During the week I have worked all around the School. Here is a short summary of what I did. On Monday I started\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Animal behaviour\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1902,"url":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/psychology\/2023\/03\/17\/the-brain-energy-lab-connecting-and-collaborating-is-fundamental-to-everything-we-do\/","url_meta":{"origin":1080,"position":3},"title":"The Brain Energy Lab: connecting and collaborating is fundamental to everything we do","date":"March 17, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"By Catherine Hall The theme for this year's British Science Week is connections and we thought it would be a good opportunity to ask one of our psychology lecturers, Dr Catherine Hall to tell us some of the reasons why connections and collaborations are so important to research success. Since\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/psychology\/files\/2023\/03\/BSW-logo.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":550,"url":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/psychology\/2018\/09\/03\/keep-calm-and-manage-impulsivity\/","url_meta":{"origin":1080,"position":4},"title":"Keep calm and manage impulsivity","date":"September 3, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"By Aleksandra Herman Have you ever gone grocery shopping to get some bread and milk, and you found yourself leaving the shop with a bag full of items that you never intended (and needed) to buy? Or maybe you\u2019ve committed to keeping a diet, but found it impossible to resist\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "PhD research"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/psychology\/files\/2018\/09\/Keep-Calmandmanage-impulsivity.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":225,"url":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/psychology\/2016\/06\/14\/reflections-of-a-first-year-phd-student\/","url_meta":{"origin":1080,"position":5},"title":"Reflections of a first year PhD student","date":"June 14, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"By Mateo Legan\u00e9s Fonteneau Doing a PhD was never my lifetime objective. When I finished college I started studying an engineering degree, but I realised quite soon that it wasn\u2019t what I\u2019d expected. I then went on to study Social Work, hoping to help drug addicts when I finished. As\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"First Year\"","img":{"alt_text":"Mateo with his colleagues, about to win a race","src":"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/psychology\/files\/2016\/06\/Unknown-300x169.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1080"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/156"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1080"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1114,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1080\/revisions\/1114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}