Jobin has been a vital part of CosmoLocal since September 2015.  Read about his research and ongoing projects below.

I grew up in the green and beautiful state of Kerala in the southwest part of India. For studies and work, I lived in Hyderabad in the state of Telangana and Manipal, a small town located between the mountain range of the Western Ghats and the Arabian sea. Academically, I started with a broader interest in the humanities, with a focus on language and literature. Later I moved on to linguistics and philosophical questions about science and the specific question of what constitutes a scientific inquiry. Otherwise, I am an avid reader of Malayalam and English literature and I enjoy running and cycling.

About my research

My research stems from my basic training in linguistics. Serious attention is paid by the framework builders of the discipline to creating a “scientific” picture of language in their position statements. While reading basic history and philosophy of science, I began to develop a curiosity and a critical distance regarding the “science” claims. That led to the PhD I completed in Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities under the philosopher Sundar Sarukkai in 2015. As part of the post-doctoral work in University of King’s College and at Dalhousie University, I am reworking my PhD dissertation into a book manuscript and write papers expanding some of the key questions addressed in my dissertation.

Other Activities

I’ve been very active over the past several years organizing a number of workshops relating to the history and philosophy of science as well as cosmopolitan science.  I was co-editor of the volume Science and Narratives of Nature: East and West, along with Gordon McOuat and Sundar Sarukkai; the volume rose out of a workshop of the same name I coordinated in December 2014.  I have also collaborated on a workshop titled “Engaged Anthropology,” a joint project sponsored by Manipal University and Princeton University.  I had been a visiting grad student at Princeton University in Fall 2013.

My work with Cosmo-local

I took up the role of the post-doc coordinator of “Cosmopolitanism and the local” in September 2015, and will be in Halifax until 2017 as my contract has been renewed for another year. I have been working with the director of the project Gordon McOuat in organizing two workshops — one in Shimla and the other in York University, Toronto. The Shimla workshop explores the questions concerning a partnership project on the idea of “cosmopolitan science”. The workshop in York University looks at the complex social implications and the idea of understanding the genetic ‘code, which essentially involves an act of translation. Apart from my academic research, I have been working on coordinating the workshops and towards building a public profile for Cosmo-local with Gordon McOuat and our very capable project assistant Brandi.