An introduction to Karl McAlinden; GERC PhD student in Contemporary Chinese Studies
By Karl McAlinden; GERC affiliated PhD student in the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies, University of Nottingham
Focusing on China’s adoption of carbon capture, utilisation and storage
(CCUS), its domestic demand, and the influence the international community has
on the diffusion of the technologies and its related policies, I am now in my
final year and hope to finish my thesis in the coming months. Having carried
out my fieldwork in China, were I travelled from north to south and east to
west, interviewing key Chinese CCUS-related stakeholders, I have made some
amazing contacts and collaborated on some interesting projects. While also
attending internal doctoral training courses, UK wide conferences and CCS
winter schools, last December I was lucky enough to gain a place on the IEAGHG
CCS summer school in Perth, Australia, and took the opportunity to meet with
many of the CCS stakeholders there. Currently undertaking a fellowship at Fudan
University, Shanghai, the next few months will be consumed with writing my
thesis and hoping visiting Chinese demonstration projects. Due to return to the
UK in May and already thinking about my next move, I would love to continue
building bridges between China and the UK and hope there will be opportunities
for greater CCUS-related Sino-international cooperation in the future. Of
course, if anyone has any advice or information, I’d be very pleased to hear
from them (Email: llxkjm@nottingham.ac.uk, LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/karlmcalinden).
Let me start by
saying it’s a pleasure to have the opportunity to write for the GERC blog and
to introduce a little about myself and my current PhD project.
During my time at Queen’s University, Belfast, were I was studying a BA
(Hons) in politics, I yearned for the opportunity to travel, to work abroad and
to learn a foreign language. While I had been volunteering for the Chernobyl
Children’s project and even visited Belarus, Ukraine and Russia to visit
orphanages and hospitals, this sparked my interest in sustainable development
and environmentally related work. When approached at a university careers fair
about opportunities to work for the British Council in China, teaching at a
local high school, I jumped in with two feet. Moving on to teach at the
university level, I also enrolled at a Chinese university to undertake Mandarin
Chinese classes. While living and studying in a beautiful touristy part of the
city, every day for work I would travel to one of China’s many high-tech
development parks, where most of the universities were based and I noticed
heavily polluted rivers and skies which only increased my urge to do something about
it. Returning to Queen’s the following year I studied a M.Sc. in sustainable
development and took the opportunity to return to China to intern at an
environment NGO, as well as political parties and economic developmental
agencies in Ireland.
Eager to return to China upon graduation, I continued with my studies
and held a job working for one of China’s most renowned environmentalists, Ma
Jun. While the work we did was government approved, we definitely tread a fine
line, pushing the boundaries in order to make a real social and environment
improvement. My primary role there was to research, record and communicate with
large multi-nations about environmental violation with their Chinese suppliers.
With our records, at that time, well over one hundred thousand cases and
growing rapidly, we frequently released industry reports to push these
companies into improving their supply chain management, primarily by forcing
their companies to undergo supervised third party environmental audits. While
this was a wholly satisfying job, after a number of years I sought further
opportunities and was employed as a Project Manager for a European Union
technical assistance project which focused on bringing together the European
Commission departments and Chinese ministries to work on bilateral matters to
support China’s trade reform and the sustainable development agendas. After
some time, I received news from the University of Nottingham and GERC that I
had been awarded a three year studentship to study my PhD at Nottingham, so I
returned to the UK.
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| Presenting at conferences and workshops |
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| IEAGHG CCS summer school in Perth |
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