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- Convenors:
-
Jarita Holbrook
(University of Edinburgh Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)
Lois Trautvetter (Northwestern University)
Anissa Tanweer (University of Washington)
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- Format:
- Traditional Open Panel
- Location:
- NU-3A06
- Sessions:
- Thursday 18 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Amsterdam
Short Abstract:
In studying astrophysicists, observatories and Indigenous astronomy, what are the relationships that are built with these communities? Is research being done considering CARE (Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility and Ethics)? Are the relationships integral to transformation?
Long Abstract:
At the 2023 4S Honolulu panel “Cultural Astronomy: The meeting point of Sea, Sky and Land,” we explored research that spans the astronomy space including engagements with Indigenous knowledge holders, efforts to promote astro-tourism, and historicising the lives of astrophysicists. This year, we plan to focus on STS’s move away from extractive research models, and want to explore various aspects of the relationships between researcher and research subject. How do you see your presence and your research as changing the communities in which you do research? Did you have the intention of sharing your results with the community you study? Relevant to the theme ‘Making and Doing Transformations,’ have you used creative ways of presenting your research to the science communities or Indigenous communities that you engage with? Did you co-create any part of your project with your community? In terms of the data generated, how are you engaging with the FAIR (findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability) and CARE (Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, and Ethics) principles? The panel organizers are part of the Social Science team of the LSST Discovery Alliance Catalyst program.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 18 July, 2024, -Paper short abstract:
A team of disciplinarily diverse social scientists play multiple roles of researcher, leader, and mentor focusing on the Rubin Observatory’s LSST. We will share the complexity/‘messiness’ of our multi-layered positionality and how it contributes to transforming scientific communities with dialogue.
Paper long abstract:
In 2021, we—a team of disciplinarily diverse social scientists—were invited by the LSST Discovery Alliance (LSST-DA) to participate in the development of privately-funded postdoctoral fellowships that focus on the Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). The LSST project aims to produce an unprecedented 10-year long high-definition video of the night sky, and is expected to produce ground-breaking discoveries about the universe. Uniquely, fellowships were awarded to both astronomers and junior scholars in the social science and humanities.
In our collaboration with astronomers, we social scientists came to take on multiple, overlapping roles. We serve on the Steering Committee with influence over processes for selecting fellows, as members of the Fellows’ mentoring committees, and also as research grant recipients of the LSST Discovery Alliance who are pursuing our own research about the LSST community and astrophysics more broadly.
We hope to share the complexity and ‘messiness’ of our multi-layered positionality as social scientists studying relationships via examples involving research, leadership, and mentoring within a scientific community. We also want to raise pressing questions and hope to learn from discussion with others. How do we interpret and frame our research findings given our own influence over our phenomenon of study? How do we decide when to intervene and when to observe? How do we ethically navigate asymmetrical relationships with individuals who simultaneously may not only be research subjects but also be mentees or researchers?
Paper short abstract:
In this talk, I will show how astronomers construct societal responsibilities around astronomical facilities. Moreover, I will present how I create feedback loops between my findings and the astronomical and local communities, specifically in the context of the Africa Millimetre Telescope.
Paper long abstract:
Many of the world’s top astronomical facilities are based on land that originally belonged to indigenous people groups. Increasingly, astronomers are urged to reflect and act on the societal responsibility they have in building, operating and using these facilities. Astronomers and local communities alike have a growing awareness that astronomy has benefitted from “settler colonialism” by neglecting cultural, historical and environmental heritage of local communities. People from both communities argue that astronomers should reject these benefits in the future by engaging in early stage dialogue with local communities and pushing for science that benefits all.
Empirical insights are lacking into how astronomers interpret and deal, in real life settings, with citizens who ‘talk back’ to science. What societal needs and concerns are (in)visible to astronomers and why? Using multi-sited ethnography, I will deliver thick descriptions on how astronomers develop opinions about societal problems and construct their responsibilities, including notions of ‘doing good science’. This research will focus on the Africa Millimetre Telescope (AMT) project which is currently being developed in Namibia. By also conducting field work within Namibian societal groups, this research aims to generate feedback loops between astronomers and society.
This talk will highlight preliminary results of the ethnographic research done so far within the AMT team and describe how feedback loops have been created between the researcher and the researched. It will also describe how this research is working towards co-creating, with astronomers, frameworks for discussing societal issues around astronomical facilities.
Paper short abstract:
For the interviewed based project ASTROMOVES, I built relationships that emphasized control of their own words and their own images above and beyond what was required of me from the perspective of university ethics. Those relationships continue past the end of the project.
Paper long abstract:
The ASTROMOVES project relies on interviews with astrophysicists and those in related sciences. Relationships began with the request for interviews and continue past the official end of the project. The consent form which included three possible levels of consent, gave details on what would be done with their interview data and how it would be presented publicly. Because documentary films are part of the research outputs, informal permissions were granted for each clip used in the films and presentations though as far as university ethics were concerned this was not needed. Reflecting on the C.A.R.E. principles of Indigenous Data Governance, A is for authority to control their own data. Similarly, as the researcher, I felt that each person interviewed had the authority to control their image and thus gave them several opportunities to approve or disapprove how I used film clips that featured them. This additional informal permission had at least a two-fold benefit in that as a researcher I felt comfortable presenting the film clips and I imagine that the people featured trust me more. When writing articles, I evoked pseudonyms for quotes, but these were edited to remove identifiers. As with the film clips, I shared drafts of articles with the people quoted to ensure that they thought they were sufficiently unidentifiable. I worked with the non-heterosexual people that I interviewed to decide how to represent the third gender category which is now LGBTQIA+. This presentation explores these aspects of the relationship between me and the scientists interviewed.