Dr Alex Bond is the Principal Curator and Curator in Charge of Birds at the Natural History Museum, and co-lead of the Adrift Lab, a research collective that focuses on seabirds & marine plastics, and the conservation of island systems. An active researcher for more than 20 years, he has published 200 peer-reviewed articles, 9 book chapters, and 2 monographs as well as a children’s book about bird diversity. Since 2005, he has been fortunate enough to study and conserve birds in Canada, Alaska, Australia, Tristan da Cunha, the Pitcairn Islands, and elsewhere (as well as unexpectedly swim in four of the world’s five oceanic basins). As former chair of LGBTQ+STEM and passionate advocate for making a better place for marginalized scientists, he was awarded the 2020 Royal Society Athena Prize and the 2022 BTO Marsh Award for Ornithology. Since 2014, he has lived in the UK with his husband, Jeremy.

Priya Silverstein is an Assistant Researcher on the EXCELScIOR project at the University of Coimbra.  After completing their PhD in developmental psychology at Lancaster University in the UK, Priya held a series of remote research positions in metascience (science of science), working at the Journal Editors Discussion Interface, the Center for Open Science, and the Psychological Science Accelerator. In 2025, Priya moved to Coimbra, Portugal, with their husband and two cats, Butter and Nut. Their work falls into two main themes: research credibility (including replicability, reproducibility, and generalisability), and open science uptake (by students, researchers, and journal editors). They were the president of the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science in 2025, and are currently the Associate Director of the Journal Editors Discussion Interface, an online community for journal editors across the social sciences aiming to increase the uptake of open science policies at journals. In their spare time, Priya experiences queer joy through hiking, yoga, and cooking.