Thanks for a great 2023 Inclusive SciComm Symposium! The next Symposium will be held in 2025.
The Symposium aims to convene science communication (SciComm) practitioners, scholars, and educators working across many disciplines, sectors, methods, settings, and topics to discuss practical approaches for advancing inclusive approaches to SciComm and public engagement. The symposium defines SciComm in its broadest sense, as any information exchange designed to engage specific audiences in conversations or activities related to science, technology, engineering, mathematics, or medicine (STEMM).
Inclusive SciComm comprises varied perspectives, including community engagement, informal science learning, arts, community organizing, journalism, community-based participatory research, inclusive pedagogy, service learning, library science, and many others. The purpose of the Inclusive SciComm Symposium is to build a community that actively challenges the dominant, frequently marginalizing norms of STEMM and deficit-oriented approaches to communication culture, and promotes science communication that values individual and group assets. Through these transformations, the Inclusive SciComm community will reimagine and change how science is conducted and discussed.
Practical approaches to inclusive SciComm are particularly important given the pandemic, ongoing racism, and structural inequities. These overlapping events and experiences have highlighted the urgent need for action. We need strategies for putting intentionality, reciprocity, and reflexivity – the key traits of inclusive science communication – into practice. Science communication is continually and rapidly changing; therefore, we must be aware of our intent and impact as we communicate, educate, and research.
