Satya Savitzky obituary
My son, Satya Savitzky, who has died aged 41, was an academic who made his mark in the field of mobilities studies, an area of sociology concerned with interrogating the complexities of a world of moving people, goods and ideas.
His doctoral thesis, Icy Futures: Carving the Northern Sea Route, completed at Lancaster University in 2016, examined the relationship between oil, vessels and a changing climate. It was one of the first in the field to “go to sea”, bringing together in a single analytical framework the crucial role of shipping lanes in contemporary geopolitics and climate change.
Satya also co-edited (with John Urry and Thomas Birtchnell) a collection of essays, Cargomobilities (2015), which brought to life the largely hidden global hubs and flows of cargo and freight.
Born in Brixton, south London, Satya attended Pimlico school and then South Thames College before gaining a degree in politics and communication studies at Liverpool University. He then secured a master’s degree with distinction in digital media at Goldsmiths, University of London.
After completing his doctoral studies at Lancaster, Satya returned to London and in 2017 joined the activist group Fuel Poverty Action as a researcher. During the Covid-19 lockdown, he volunteered in a food distribution warehouse in Finsbury Park, north London.
Indeed, he endeavoured to be a researcher who could make a difference to real lives, while also committed to making change in academia. His experience of postdoctoral research positions left him, though professionally successful, pessimistic about the prospects for early career scholars. He frequently expressed his unhappiness at individualistic research cultures, discriminatory practices, and the lack of security to which younger researchers, particularly those from minority ethnic backgrounds, were subjected.
In 2021 he joined the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity at the University of Oldenburg as a research scientist, moving to Germany, where the institute is based. With a focus on oceans and marine ecosystems, the institute, founded in 2017, was in the process of building a new multidisciplinary team drawn from different parts of the world.
Satya thrived in this environment, and achieved a great deal during his short time there. He published a critical study of Singapore’s efforts to maintain its position as the world’s leading refuelling hub, and was completing a study of marine invasive species management. He was also looking at the effects of the oil spill by the tanker MV Wakashio on the coastal waters of Mauritius and the questions it has raised for global ocean biodiversity governance.
Satya’s work attended to the injustices and inequalities within the global movements he studied. He insisted that researchers need to be able to follow controversies, wherever they lead.
With so much to offer the world, Satya took his own life in a moment of darkness.
A decade ago, Satya took his mother Foufou’s surname, Savitzky. He is survived by his mother and me, and his sisters, Aidah, Illie and Attillah.