A Hybrid Path Through the World of Research

What is your background and your research interest?

Saskia de Wildt: In the last ten years I completed a PhD in Environmental Studies and a Master’s in International Development. Before that, I worked as an art director in the Dutch film and television industry, so my background is creative practice. I was thirty years old when I entered university – it was a completely different world with a completely different language and a completely different way of understanding the world. I think it was also my first serious encounter with theory. Twelve years later, I've developed a hybrid way of moving through academia or research institutes while incorporating creative practices and methods.

What projects did you work on during your fellowship at RIFS?

S.de W.: My nine‑month fellowship has allowed me to deepen my understanding of a performance intervention I created before arriving at RIFS. The intervention revolves around a persona that I created: “Mx. Science”. And I enter scientific spaces as this persona. Mx. Science looks like something from another world: they wear a pink, furry hat with horns and have a blue face. When I enter these spaces, people don't immediately understand who I am or what I am doing, which creates an opening for conversations. Questions quickly emerge: Who are you? What you are doing? What does it mean to be a scientist? What are the norms in these spaces and how are these being broken by the presence of somebody like Mx. Science? I'm breaking with this idea of representation. I'm asking a question about science itself as a performance through this performance. For example, when I'm making a copy as Mx. Science at the copy machine, my appearance transforms this simple act into a performance. It makes certain practices or conventions that we take for granted, visible: take something simple like conference name tags. When I take my performance to a conference and engage with people there, some wonder if I belong there. Then, when I turn my name tag around so they can see my name, title and affiliation, they suddenly accept that I do belong in that space. It is striking because it reveals how we think about what legitimises — or delegitimises — our presence in these settings. What (invisible) social conventions do we need to fulfil to be taken seriously? And what happens when you do not immediately fit, or flat out refuse to live up to these norms? What spaces do we hold for our differences within science?  

What is behind the idea of Mx. Science? 

S.de W.: Mx. Science emerged as a part of my PhD research, in which I collaborated on an interdisciplinary research project in the Canadian Arctic, together with several genetic biologists and Inuit community members from Gjoa Haven, Nunavut. I was interested in understanding what it means to ethically engage and reconcile two different knowledge systems in research practice. There's a particular principle of cross-cultural engagement that Indigenous people in North America have proposed, called the “ethical space of engagement”. This space corresponds to what is also sometimes referred to as the “third space” or the “liminal”. I have found that qualities similar to those described by Indigenous scholars can be observed in the spaces I occupy while performing as a drag‑king: an artistic practice that I have pursued parallel to my PhD research over the last six years. It seems to me that the ways in which we resist heteronormativity and exclusive societal structures through queer performance culture, create spaces similar to those I was seeking in my research. I realized that through drag I could ask similar questions around the positionality of scientists and how they engage with people that are working in different disciplines or come from different cultures. How do we engage ethically across these differences?
 

What recommendations would you like to make? 

S.de W.: One of the methods that I use is the invitation – a simple, open-ended prompt that lets the recipient decide how they want to respond. Are you curious? Do you want to engage? And then we see what comes out of that conversation. When it comes to scientific practice, I think we need to be asking more and different questions around ethics: How can we make research more responsive to the differences across which we work? What's the role of the institute and the researcher in doing so? And in the context of RIFS: What is actually urgent? What is sustainability? What does this really mean? Does it mean the same thing for everybody in the room? My research is not so much about creating output but more about exploring how to do things differently. 

What does RIFS offer you that other institutions cannot? 

S.de W.: This fellowship has given me the time to deepen my knowledge around this particular intervention, to study relevant publications, converse with other fellows, and to stage several mini-interventions. I think it's crucial for institutes to make space for such experimental work. Now I'm organizing a research cabaret here at RIFS called “Submit to the Monster”. It is a hybrid format – part presentation, part lecture, part cabaret, and part workshop. It's a performative-informative format where we're going to rethink how the research proposal can be re-thought as a place of hospitality and transformation. 
 

Sign-up for the Research Cabaret at 26th November 2025 from 2pm to 5 pm at the RIFS Bank Building "Submit to the Monster": https://eveeno.com/researchcabaret/