What does it mean to be a citizen scientist and why does it matter? In what ways can the promotion of open science and citizen innovation contribute to a better social-technical future? What are the challenges and limits? Anwers to these quesiton may vary from region to region, but are equally enlightening and inspiring.
We’re thrilled to have four citizen science leaders from Brazil share their insights at our next online event between 17:00-18:30 UK time Wednesday 8 February.
The event is part of the Decolonising Global Participation project led by Dr Joy Zhang and funded by the Independent Social Research Foundation. It is free and open to all. Please register here.
Speakers:
Sarita Albagli is a professor of the Graduate Program in Information Science at the Instituto Brasileiro de Informação em Ciência e Tecnologia & Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (IBICT-UFRJ). She heads the Laboratory of Open Science and Citizen Innovation (CindaLab). She is also the scientific coordinator of Civis Citizen Science Platform.
Luisa Maria Diele-Viegas is the vice-president of the Brazilian Association of Ecological Science and Conservation – ABECO. She is a founder of the scientific dissemination project Minha Amiga Cientista (My Scientist Friend), the Salvador Climate Forum, the Nordeste de Clima network, the Women in Zoology network and the Kunhã Asé Network of Women in Science (RKA). She is currently a visiting professor at the Federal University of Bahia. Her research involves assessing the impact of human actions on biodiversity, with a focus on climate change and terrestrial ectothermic vertebrates. She also studies academic biases.
Tiago Lubiana is an ontologist, bioinformatician at the Ronin Institute, New Jersey and a member of Wiki Movimento Brasil, an NGO supporting local Wiki-related activities. He is also a community scientist who contributes to open biodiversity projects such as eBird and iNaturalist. He maintains the iNat2Wiki platform (https://inat2wiki.onrender.com/) which facilitates the reconciliation of openly-licensed content on iNaturalist to Wikipedia and its sister projects. He is conducting a PhD study at the University of São Paulo on formal knowledge representations of biology and the socio-technological process of knowledge integration.
Adriano Sampaio is permaculturist and water activist who is based in São Paulo and works with Guarani indigenous people. He initiated and organised several programmes on the regeneration of urban springs and the development of microecosystems in urban areas. Together with the Guarani indigenous people, he has recovered the river that was silted up and has created lakes for fish farming to support the villagers.
Chair
Clarissa Reche is an artist, educator, writer and researcher. She is interested in the interfaces between the body, biology, technology and culture, dialoguing with feminist and decolonial critics. She is a member of the Centre for Global Science and Epistemic Justice (GSEJ) at the University of Kent, and Labyrinth (Laboratory of Socio-anthropological Studies on Life Technologies) in Brazil. She contributes to Sanga collective through developing workshops on art, society, technology and science. She is also a member of the Leilane Assunção collective, which supports affirmative actions in graduate studies. She is currently finishing her PhD research at IFCH-UNICAMP, Brazil.