My name is Juliette Garczynski, I am 24 years old and I am a philosopher by training. I am in the first year of my PhD at Sorbonne Université and the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (IHPST). My research focuses on ageing in general, and on the measurement of “age” in particular. It lies between the philosophy of science and biology. In simple terms, I am interested in the role of the environment and social factors in the progression of ageing, and in how taking into account the context in which we age can lead us to rethink the way biological age is assessed. In other words, my primary aim is to contribute to finding ways of measuring whether an individual is ageing faster, in better health or in poorer health than another.

Why did you choose to work on this topic and pursue your PhD within this research laboratory?

I chose this topic for many reasons, personal ones first and foremost. From a young age, I have been interested in metaphysical questions relating to “death” as well as those concerning “time.” Ageing is a process whose endpoint is sometimes associated with the idea of “natural death” – a concept that I sought to analyse and critique in my Master's dissertation – and which also necessarily involves the passage of time. The relationship between death, time and ageing seems particularly complex and intriguing to me. Ageing is therefore fascinating from a philosophical perspective, but also from a scientific one: there is currently no real consensus on the subject, and it is an area of active research. It also raises major societal and political issues. In this respect, I see it as a particularly stimulating research topic with far-reaching implications. The PhD represents an opportunity for me to make a substantial contribution to this field while continuing a line of thinking that I had already begun during my research master’s degree.

Being based both in a bioinformatics laboratory (AIRE) and in a philosophy of science laboratory (IHPST) gives me access to different perspectives and research methods that my PhD seeks to bring together. This setting allows me, in particular, to develop my knowledge of biology, especially bioinformatics, while maintaining and deepening my philosophical approach at IHPST. My PhD is jointly supervised by Eric Bapteste, a specialist in evolutionary biology and the biology of ageing, and Philippe Huneman, a specialist in the epistemology of ageing and the philosophy of evolutionary biology. Having two supervisors from these different research backgrounds allows me to enrich my thinking through their complementary approaches.

After your first year as a PhD candidate, what are the main discoveries, skills or experiences you take away from this stage of your research journey?

My first year as a PhD candidate has been particularly rich in many respects. Above all, it has been an introduction to the work of a researcher in both biology and the philosophy of science. I am discovering how I personally want to conduct research. In this sense, the PhD is an opportunity to become more independent in my work after several years of more structured study, but also to learn how to work with researchers – for example, by developing a greater capacity for theoretical and conceptual thinking. I have also begun to understand how research is structured in these two disciplines.

On a more technical level, I have learned how to build a working bibliography – in other words, how to conduct a literature review on a given topic – by selecting the most relevant papers and reading those that I consider most important. I am continuing to develop my knowledge of biology by reading a great deal of scientific literature and discussing it with the biologists in my laboratory, and above all by learning bioinformatics. I have started working on data analysis and am currently learning how to code.

Finally, in terms of experiences during my PhD, I had the opportunity to take part in a conference in May on “The Evolution of Concepts”  as part of the Franco-Mexican Seminar at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City, as well as the PhilInBiomed summer school on “Philosophy in Biology and Medicine” at the University of Bordeaux, which focused on ageing. These events gave me the opportunity to discuss ideas with researchers working on the same concepts as me and attempting to bring science and philosophy together. I came away from these experiences convinced that these intellectual and human encounters have been an important part of my first year of doctoral research, both personally and professionally.

© Photo credit: Juliette Garczynski