Facilitator

Overview

I find joy in facilitation of workshops and ideation sessions. In particular, those which bring together diverse groups to solve complex problems (e.g., interdisciplinary researchers, or those from different cultures). Here I outline some of the ambitious projects I've run to bring together groups to achieve tangible results. In addition to these more major projects, I regularly run one off ideation sessions using multiple techniques to enable effective generation of ideas and actions with diverse groups.

Bringing together African & European Research Communities with an Inclusive Astronomy Conference

Conference participant photograph. Around 90 people looking up at a camera taken from a balcony

In July 2024, I co-chaired with Leah Morabito (Durham University) a workshop to bring together researchers from African and European communities. A report can be found here: https://zenodo.org/records/14179194

Significant planning went into creating an inclusive and supportive process, to give equity of access to a scientifically vibrant international workshop, for those who are historically underprivileged and excluded. 43% of the participants were of African origin or affiliation. We believe the processes and lessons learnt will be useful and interesting to a wide range of communities. Therefore we've written up the report of what we did, including a participant evaluation, and with recommendations for other communities with similar objectives. Our conference happened to be about supermassive black holes and lots of exciting science resulted from it, including new collaborations! Many of the conference contributions can also be found on the Zenodo community.

Audible Universe Workshops

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