Community engagement

Critical engagement with different communities, science communication, transparency (and responsible stewardship of information that belongs to other communities), and social justice are central to our work.

Interdisciplinary engagements

Entangled banks: a queer persepective on microbial communities

An art collaboration with the amazing printmaker and multimedia artist Corinne Teed, thinking on the ways in which microbial systems put into question myths of individualism, the idea is to engage with ecological notions of ourselves as an ecosystem, while also interrupting simplistic ideas of microbes as being present for human benefit. Our work will examine ideas of identity that cannot be separated from historical and ecological contexts, and the ways in which microbial interactions in communities and with our bodies, challenge easy categories of “good” and “bad”. With this work we will expose the ways in which, microbes as “queer critters” (Barad, 2011) challenge a dualistic understanding that erases interrelational complexities. As part of this collaboration, some of letters we wrote to each other during COVID were published in the “Tipping Point” issue of the Mid America Print Councinl Journal.

Nature, Data, and Power: How hegemonies shape biological knowledge

An innitiative within “The American Naturalist” to publish papers that address how systems of power and oppression have shaped theory and practice in organismal biology (including but not limited to behavior, ecology, evolution, and genetics). For more information you can see the (now closed) call for papers here.

Past engagements

María is a former fellow at the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science, and the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change.

Engagement with communities outside academia

Market science

Market Science started as a collective of scientists form around the Twin Cities (mainly University of Minnesota) engaging with communities through hands-on activities in different farmers markets around the TC metro area. María participated regularly in Market Science (Twin Cities) both as a session leader or as a volunteer helping with other sessions. Then, she was a founder and coordinator of a sister project in Pittsburgh (Market Science PGH), sharing cool hands-on activities once a month at the Bloomfield Farmers Market. We are hoping to bring Market Science to Irvine and nearby areas.

Market Science (el mercado científico) empezó como un colectivo de científicos a los alrededores de las Ciudades Gemelas en Minnesota llevando actiuviades y experimentos a distintos mercados en el área metropolitana de las Ciudades Gemelas. María participó frecuentemente como voluntaria en ese proyecto y en 2017 fundó Market Science PGH en Pittsburgh. Ahora, esperamos poder empezar un proyecto similar en Irvine y áreas adyacentes.

Fenotípico

Maria used to write a science blog in Spanish trying to highlight some of the nuances of evolutionary thinking, the importance of developmental and ecological process in phenotypic evolution and some of the more sociological and political aspects of evolutionary biology. You can check it out here.

María escribía en un blog de ciencia en español tratando de enfatizar algunas de los matices del pensamiento evolutivo, la importancia de procesos ecológicos y de desarrollo en la evolución fenotípica y algunas de las implicaciones socio-políticas de la biología evolutiva.

Fenotípico will be back at the end of the summer of 2021/ Fenotípico volverá al final del verano de 2021