Hello, JustSpace readers! It’s August, and you know what that means: That’s right, since our last newsletter in June, the Earth has passed through the point in our orbit that’s farthest from the Sun, and now we’re hurtling back towards our host star even as the Northern Hemisphere hurtles towards winter. Oh, and also it’s time for our August newsletter.

For this month, we caught up with anthropologist and former JustSpace Board member Kathryn Denning about her career journey, her research on space, and her hopes for our shared future. The interview below has been edited for clarity and length Enjoy!

Q&A with Kathryn Denning

What is your current or most recent position?

I have, for over 20 years now, been a professor at York University in Canada, in the Department of Anthropology. I've also had the privilege of being involved in various space-related organizations and collaborations. Over the years, I've been an active member of the International Academy of Astronautics, particularly the SETI [Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence] Committee. I'm a member of the SETI Post-Detection Hub and of the SETI Institute Science Advisory Board and I’ve guest lectured at International Space University. So I'm an anthropologist who does space-related stuff.

So how did you end up as a space-related anthropologist?

You know, it wasn't really on purpose, but it may have been somewhat inevitable.

I started my higher education journey just super interested in questions of evolution and scientific research. I started my undergraduate studies thinking that I might become a biologist or something like that. But in my first year of my program, which combined both sciences and arts, I took an elective in archaeology, which I already knew I loved since I’d done a field school when I was in high school. But once I took this class in archaeology, I was like, “Oh my God, that is it. That is what I must study. And that is what I must be when I grow up.” And so I changed programs to my anthropology major.

But I was coming of age academically at a time when archaeologists were realizing that our work had serious ethical issues. For decades, some researchers had been happily studying ancient skeletons without really getting permission from descendant communities, or really thinking about the damage that can do. They were acting as though ancestral remains were just a scientific resource to be explored and used, and not thinking about the consequences for descendant populations.That’s a problem since lots of archaeology takes place in deeply colonial contexts like Canada, where I grew up.

So those kinds of issues were very much on my mind. A few years later I was at a conference with colleagues presenting on our project about the Archaeology of Zoos, which is fascinating but difficult because zoos make you confront some horrors about human relationships with other animals. Then I attended a session about the African Burial Ground in New York, which is also a tough subject; at least that project had the support of the descendant community, in telling the stories of people who had been enslaved centuries ago in what later became New York, but of course it’s the more depressing side of archaeology.

And then right after that session, I thought, “OK, it's still early in the day. What do I do now?” I was just about tapped out emotionally and low on energy. There was a session on the archaeology of outer space, so I thought, “That looks fun. I'll go to that.”

And literally everything changed from there. There was a researcher there from the SETI Institute who had the job title of the Director of Interstellar Message Composition, which I thought was incredibly cool. He wanted to talk to archaeologists about what it's like to communicate across time, or to try and decipher messages across time. And we got to talking and he said, “Would you like to be a part of a workshop later this year at the SETI Institute?” And I did not hesitate before saying, “Why yes, I would! ” So I went and I met all the astronomers from the SETI Institute, got involved in conversations there. And so that was the beginning of my segue into space.There were threads from my work in archaeology and anthropology that transferred surprisingly easily into the world of space, but it's not a decision that I consciously made.

How did your work in the rest of your career intersect with space? I'm particularly intrigued about how your background with things like the ethics of anthropology and archaeology informed your work when it came to space.

Yeah, it's informed [my work] profoundly. There have been several different streams to my work. And in each case, I've been responding to what I thought was necessary at the time.

The first was: How do we tell the story of human society in the context of space? One of the things that happens in the SETI world is [that] people are always thinking about, “Well, if other civilizations exist out there, what would they be like?” ” And then they try to answer that question partly based on what they think we know about human social evolution. And quite frequently, those stories about human history that are told are kind of outdated, kind of wrong, kind of colonial, all of those problems. So the first phase of my work in this area was about that.

Then I had a really serendipitous collaboration with a biologist/psychologist who works on whale intelligence, amongst other subjects. We worked on what we called the “missing middle.” Most of astrobiology is about potential microbial life elsewhere, and most of SETI is about technological life. There hasn’t been much prospect of definitively detecting intelligent but non-technological life, so this middle ground was comparatively neglected. But there are all these questions about, “What is intelligence? What are the pathways to intelligence? How likely is it and what do we even mean by that term?” There's a lot of interesting conversations to be had. So I did a fair bit of work in that area for a while over a decade ago.

But in [that work] there were all these ethical issues, because if you spend any time thinking about other intelligent creatures on this planet, you have to immediately recognize one of the big problems is what humans do to them in the course of science, and also just in the course of life. So there are a lot of important questions about the entanglement of science and crucial questions about rights for nonhuman animals, and protections for them, and edges on our curiosity. And where that connects ultimately to space, of course, is [that] someday humans may have the capacity to actually reach other worlds. I don't think we're going to be going on any great interstellar voyages ourselves anytime soon. However, our technology might, so we may eventually have the capacity to directly access other life forms, if they're out there. And the time to be thinking about the ethics of that is now. So that's something that I've spoken about quite a lot, because it could be a horror show if all the science that has been done in astrobiology to discover other lively worlds ended up with the same kinds of abuses of other life forms that we see on our own planet. That would be an utter tragedy, to my mind. But I think we have to actively steer away from that outcome, and we should start now.

And then the third stream [in my work] is basically stuff related to policy and things like protocols. I've been involved for years now in discussions about what are colloquially referred to as the “SETI post-detection protocols”. Let's say that these scientific experiments work, and they actually make a discovery of a technosignature of extraterrestrial intelligence. What happens then? There's a great deal of work to be done in that area, both in terms of realistic plans for communication with the public and also all the questions of what comes afterwards.

So I've ended up working in all three of those areas over the years, but I think the most important part of the intersection of my work with space has been teaching and mentoring. The course that I taught for years on the Anthropology of Outer Space was for generalists from all majors, all across campus, and my mission really was to get people thinking about themselves as being citizens of the solar system. Because as you know very, very well at the JustSpace Alliance, the decisions about space until now have been mostly in the hands of governments and corporations. But if we think of space as the common heritage of all humanity– and I do– then we need people to be empowered to weigh in on the absolutely epic decisions that are being made about what happens above our heads and in the rest of our solar system. So I think that's probably been one of the most important parts [of my work].

One thing I try to convey to people in my own work is that you don't have to go to school to be an astrophysicist to do work related to space, and you don't even have to be in academia to have that kind of impact that you are describing. So what advice do you have for students who are interested in following similar non-STEM paths that intersect with space in this way?

It's a great question. The first thing I tell them is that, as a human, your voice is needed. And as a scholar, if that's what you choose to be, your mind is needed.

My general answer is: Don't try and replicate my particular path, because like all paths, it was really idiosyncratic and I couldn't have designed it in advance if I had tried.

Just begin joining space-related communities – but look for the balanced ones. Seek an opportunity to take a course, if you can. There are tons of large open online courses, even if there isn't one at your own institution. When I created the Anthropology of Outer Space class, it was a bit ahead of his time. There weren't really many courses like that at the time. There are more now. It may be hard for you to find a course that's exactly in your area of interest, but luckily there are great books. There's more and more accessible reading that it's not super technical, but it introduces you to other questions about space. Like your book, Erika! [Erika Nesvold, the interviewer in this Q&A and author of Off-Earth: Ethical Questions and Quandaries for Living in Outer Space, who tried to take out this plug but Kathryn made me put it back in]

Often you'll have opportunities in your undergraduate studies to do projects or write essays – see if your professor will let you focus on space. It's a great way to learn more. If you're following a full academic path, you may be able to get into a masters program in a related area. There are more opportunities for programs in this area than there used to be. Chances are that you'll have to design your own program a little bit, so you'll need to find somebody to work with and you'll need to go to an institution where there are cross-connections between the different parts of the faculty, so if you can go to an institution where interdisciplinarity is strongly encouraged and where it's part of the ethos of the university, then that's going to be be easier for you.

One of the challenges, if you're, say, a social scientist and you're really interested in space, is that for your contributions to be relevant, you need to be at least reasonably informed about what the science is actually saying right now, so for example, you need to know what the current state of play is for interstellar propulsion. For example, you can talk about colony ships all you want, but you need to know: Is that real? Or is that a realistic possibility anytime soon? And so for that you are probably going to have to talk to a physicist, or at least read some recent material in that area.

[Overly dramatic gasp from the interviewer, a physicist]

Similarly, if you're interested in questions of life beyond Earth, you can speculate all you like and have fun with that, but if you want your work to be grounded in reality, then you need to read some astrobiology and talk to astrobiologists. Luckily, many people in those areas– physicists, astrobiologists, planetary scientists, etcetera– are actually really interested in psychology, human questions, and all of that, too. So usually they will welcome the conversation, but you just have to figure out how to start it, how to make those conversations happen.

More broadly, for anybody who wants to get involved in this kind of work, you can join so many different space-related groups and just learn, participate, and share your voice. Again, in my opinion, we do need more input from citizens, as opposed to people who are working specifically for different corporations, different governments, etc. We need more input from everybody. And there's a lot of misunderstanding about the potential that space has for humans right now. Mars colonization is a huge one, right? There are facts available, and I always encourage people to go and find those [facts], instead of just believing the first or loudest voice that they hear about, you know, exactly how many humans are going to be living on Mars by a given date.

So we've talked about the facts, but I know that a lot of people are also influenced by fiction and stories, and I think at the cultural level, people's perceptions of space are absolutely influenced by that. Are there any particular stories that have influenced your work or motivated you?

Funnily enough, I have not been a huge science fiction reader. I was always more interested in science reading, because for me, that was always epic and fascinating enough. I mean, maybe I’m strange, but for me the story of the evolution of fish actually is a little bit more exciting than fictional stories about what humans might do in space, because facts are extremely compelling to me. That said, I do love a good story, of course.

I was a teenager in the 80s. I watched the first Carl Sagan Cosmos series, and I would say that that was influential for me, because it was this epic story of the universe and everything in it, and it was making the point that we are a part of this. And I really love that. So certainly that framing influenced me at the same time. Of course, I'm also a child of the Star Wars generation, the original [trilogy].

I’ve also been influenced, of course, by fiction in the SETI domain. The Sagan book Contact, and the film version, is really good. I've always appreciated that one I thought the film Arrival was fantastic. I really, really liked that in terms of fiction. The story’s author, Ted Chiang, I think is superb. Not just Chiang’s novella “Story of Your Life”, on which Arrival is based, but his other work. There's this beautiful, beautiful story called “The Great Silence” about the parrots of Arecibo that is so poignant and so touching and so painful. It's basically about the parrots watching the humans looking for life elsewhere while there's this magnificent intelligence flying all around them. It's really, really moving.

Other stuff in general that has really influenced me is that genre of interspecies relationships here on Earth. That was the stuff that I most valued as a kid, and I still love a good Jane Goodall story.

What is your vision of humanity’s relationship with space going forward into the future?

Well, there's my ideal vision, and then there's what I think is really going to happen. I'll give you the “what I think is really going to happen” first.

Humans do what humans do, right? We don't change all that much. We have the capacity to change considerably, but we don't use it as much as we might like to. And in our current really fractured world, with incredible challenges on the international relations front, huge challenges in terms of climate change and biodiversity collapse, and all of those questions– some of those are extremely huge problems and they would be difficult to solve together as a globe, but we could certainly be doing better than we are.

So that informs my opinion about how space is going to play out. I think those kinds of issues are going to continue. I think there will be this situation where some people are focused on short-term gain and jockeying for position and power and extracting resources on a first-come, first-served basis without consideration for principles of equity and things like that. I think we're looking at escalating militarization. And of course, the balance of government-sponsored versus corporate-based presence in space is shifting quite dramatically, and some of that is unprecedented. AI is obviously a game-changer already, and it will be more and more so in the future.

Personally, and this is controversial for some, but I personally have never seen much point to humans actually being in space. I understand the desire to do that, but the idea of really robust human colonization? There are those with full technical understanding who understand what an enormous challenge that would be, but want to do it anyway. But I think most people who think that it's a good idea actually don't have all the information about the immense challenges, for example, of Mars colonization or of other possible futures off-world.

So, what is my own vision for humanity’s future relationships with space? I would like us to do a lot of looking, but not touching. I'm not fond of space tourism myself. I know that some people think that it's a great way to expand your consciousness and all of that. But I don't buy it personally, and I think that the environmental costs of those jaunts beyond the Kármán line could be substantial over time. So I would prefer us to do all the scientific exploration robotically – build the telescopes, see further, understand more. I think it’s better to exercise our human nature not by trying to put footprints everywhere, but by exercising our curiosity instead, and doing the best science that we can.

I would like to see the future in which space resources are treated very carefully and used equitably. I would like to see protections for any life that may exist out there– and it may or may not! We literally don't know. I would like to see us use space for the benefit of Earth, but not in an extractivist sense. I mean, there are some wonderful research streams on this, and I'd like to see them thrive, because space-based monitoring for Earth’s climate is hugely important, and we need all of it that we can get. I love programs that connect space-based applications towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals, like Space Enabled. Things like that are wonderful, and I would like to see us commit to this planet that we were born on and are living on, and to see it for the precious, singular resource that it is. Because even if there are other habitable worlds out there, they are not for us.

That's what I would love us to do, to get to that point where we can fully be here now and look further, rather than trying to be somewhere else. That's what I would like.

What do you wish the public knew, or was at least willing to learn more about, in regards to space?

I wish they knew that space was something that they can know about. It's not just the domain of rocket scientists. It's not just the domain of fiction. And it's not just the domain of billionaires. It's the domain for all of us. And that there are different ways of thinking about what that future would be like.

But it does have to start with some learning. Like, how big is the solar system, really? What is Mars really like? Those kinds of things. I would just love it if everybody had a really accessible, solid grounding in the basics, the same way you do, ideally, about the neighborhood where you live. You know where the park is. You know what the temperatures are like. You have those basic points of orientation. I wish everybody had, at their fingertips, that basic orientation about space that would let them think about the bigger questions for it.

Also, for people who already know something about space and already have strong opinions, I just want them to know that not everybody agrees. People who are really keen on colonizing Mars and believe that everybody thinks it's a good idea– It's important to understand that like most political issues, not everybody agrees. And it's important to understand that there are some international guidelines in place, like the Outer Space Treaty, which a lot of people forget about. There are some key principles that were articulated at the dawn of the Space Age about: “How are we all going to do this?” And we shouldn't ignore those.

And the last thing is: Space is endlessly fascinating. There's so much that we don't know and that we can learn and should learn. And ideally, it should be a source of endless wonder. But that doesn't mean that we have to co-opt all of it into our domestic lives. It's OK for space to be something else. It's OK for space to be not human. It's OK for us to be here and for it to be there. It doesn't have to be us expanding out into; that doesn't have to be the relationship we have with space.

Thanks for letting me expound, Erika! Please keep up the great work with JustSpace!

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