Project Overview

The Hidden Figures project seeks to explore whiteness, racism and epistemic oppression within the social and natural sciences of the Canadian academe. To this end, the project employs several methods: environmental scans, syllabi analysis, interviews with BIPOC scientists and lab ethnographies.

Syllabi Analysis

The team will collect syllabi from Canadian universities in the areas of political science, neuroscience and geoscience. Syllabi will be analyzed to understand the diversity of thinkers/scholars used in reading lists, the prominent theories used in the curricula, the use of BIPOC scientists’ work and more.

Interviews

The team will conduct interviews with BIPOC scientists in the realms of political science, neuroscience and geoscience across Canada to understand their experiences. The interviews will explore their day-to-day experiences as BIPOC scientists, as well as their experiences with knowledge production and dissemination.

Are you interested in receiving a recruitment e-mail for interviews? Please click here to fill out our mailing list form!

Lab Ethnography

The team will conduct two lab ethnographies in two respective Canadian science labs. An ethnography is an anthropological research method which aims to immerse the researcher into the cultural and social aspects of a group’s lives. Ethnographies consist of a variety of approaches, including interviews, analysis of text and visual materials used in the group’s activities, and participant observation. Through these methods they can learn more about the group’s norms, habits and rituals, rhythms and more. For this project specifically, the ethnographies will be used to understand the dynamics involved in knowledge production and dissemination.