Science should be open and welcoming to everyone. I will always advocate for re-imagining how we can structure scientific research to make it broader, bolder, and better for all people and backgrounds.

Queer in Science

I have very strong opinions on how queer lives are policed in scientific contexts and the unique threats queer & gender-diverse people face, especially in sciences which involve fieldwork like ecology and evolutionary biology. I speak about my efforts to address these issues more on my Teaching & Mentoring page.

For some features on my presence in advocating for queer-safe science, check out an interview feature from 2017 here, my 500 Queer Scientists profile, and my favourite article to date for the British Ecological Society: The Weals, Woes, and Weaponisation of Gayness in Ecology; I also wrote for the BES in 2021 for their ‘Rainbow Research’ series, you can read about my Life feature here.

Open Science

Making science open is a laudable goal, but what openness means and who open science is accessible to can differ wildly in interpretation between contexts. We must always remember that science will not be open until it is openly accessible to everyone; in that frame, I co-authored a piece in American Scientist 2019 107 (2) with a team of colleagues on current pitfalls and barriers to open science, and why insisting on a myopic vision of ‘open science’ can itself be a form of closed-group gatekeeping. I recently took up a position as a committee member for the Society for Open, Reliable, and Transparent Ecology and Evolution Biology (SORTEE).

You can read a copy of it here.