Joining the SciComm Identities Project
I’m pleased to announce I’m joining the SciComm Identities Project as a postdoctoral researcher. Not only do I get to work with some of my favorite researchers, but I also get to do work aligned with my values.
The SciComm Identities Project hopes to prepare the next generation of science communicators from diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds. It is funded by the National Science Foundation and launched by The University of Rhode Island’s Metcalf Institute, Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, and the URI Science and Story Lab.
This project invites us to think about how culture and identity are a core part–not separate from– science communication. It seems like a natural next step for me.
But it wasn’t always that way.
My own story is one of using the arts to rehumanize and resensitize myself. That is also the main mission of my research: I hope to rehumanize and resensitize the sciences using the arts.
I used to be a scientist, one who bought the whole “science should be objective” myth. I fell in love with science from an early age, poring over books about Sylvia Earle and her deep ocean exploration.
The awe.
The unknown.
The animal facts.
I loved biology and set myself on that path, hoping to be a researcher. But I found that my whole self wasn’t welcome in those spaces. I tried to fit myself into boxes, and it made me sick. By the end of my first attempt at graduate school in biology, I was severely depressed, anxious, and struggling with substance abuse.
On the way to what I thought I wanted, I had become someone I didn’t like at all.
So I left. I had no idea what I was going to do, but I knew I had to change. It started with looking directly at things instead of running away from them. I needed to build a life I didn’t want to escape from. And that meant becoming more than just an achievement machine.
This involved little things, like finally hanging the pictures leaning against the walls of my bare bedroom. It also involved big things, like quitting drinking, embracing my queerness, and learning to be in the moment. Doing improv theater taught me to listen and to stay in the now.
Tiny step after tiny step, I felt myself coming back alive. One day I looked in the mirror and realized I loved myself again.
Many years later, I am a researcher who uses art and social justice to build spaces where scientists don’t have to abandon themselves either.
Next week we begin trainings for the 2024 cohort of SciComm Identity Project Fellows. I’m so excited. I’m grateful to work with a team transforming the culture of science communication. I can’t wait to tell you how it goes.
