Feminist Collaboratories: Regenerating Cultures of Research

• In Event: Regenerating Research Culture: Feminist STS Approaches to STEM Graduate Methods

Abstract

Bringing together discussion of two grant-funded projects intended to question and push the relationship between feminism and science, this paper presents results from a residential research group practicum in “feminist social justice science methods” and initial findings from the NSF Innovations in Graduate Education funded program at UC Davis. The methods practicum aims to create models of collaboration between researchers with gender and sexuality theory expertise and social science training, and those with scientific and technical expertise and training, around social justice problems of shared interest. The UC Davis curricular program aims to create methods curriculum for a classroom shared between Ph.D. students in Gender, Sexuality and Women’s studies with Ph.D. students in Engineering and Biology fields. Both projects are hands-on attempts to regenerate and shift the the culture of research in STEM, and also in STS, to address socially-derived observational biases in research programs and to embue the practice of identifying worthy research problems with a community or social justice commitment, thereby producing more responsible and accountable research outcomes. This paper offers to forward conversations bringing together feminist methods of collaborative research (non-hierarchical, non-authorial, engaged in community) and an STS lens critical lens to suggest collaborative methods and frameworks that promise to produce more accountable, accurate and responsible scientific research.

Author

• Kalindi Vora, University of California Davis