Humlab Talk med Jarita Holbrook, i samarbete med Kultur- och medievetenskaper.
JC Holbrook, University of the Western Cape
What questions can be answered by diverse scientific teams? What answered have been delayed because diverse scientists have opted to leave research careers? What questions have not been asked because they are of concern to women and the underrepresented?
Having the richness that diversity brings makes better science, but progress towards diversification has been start and stop especially in physics & astrophysics. Holding degrees in these fields, I am personally invested in diversifying both of these through my many media projects. In this presentation, I will outline my strategies towards normalizing the idea of diverse scientists and how these are exemplified in my media products. You can access many of these via my two YouTube channels: The Cultural Astronomy Channel
https://www.youtube.com/user/astroholbrook/playlists
and The Science Tourist Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvR_8tSJ-UoonGUMvUOvn7w
Jarita Holbrook is an African American scientist intellectually occupying the spaces between astrophysics, gender studies, indigenous knowledge studies, anthropology, history and science & technology studies. A graduate of physics (BS) from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and astronomy (MS) from the San Diego State University. After working for NASA’s Goddard Space Center, she earned a doctorate in astronomy & astrophysics from UC Santa Cruz in 1997. She was then a postdoctoral research fellow at the UCLA Center for the Cultural Studies of Science, Technology, and Medicine, as well as at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. Her focus is in contemporary and historical African astronomy and cultural astronomy. She has traveled to Africa and the South Pacific to document celestial navigation techniques there and how new technologies have modified them.
Dr. Holbrook is currently an associate professor of physics at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, where she is an expert on African Indigenous astronomy as well as the principal investigator of the Astronomy & Society group at UWC.