Partnerships between Local Knowledge and Public Participation in Scientific Research
November 2011
Anne Toomey has worked in the areas of community development and environmental sustainability in places as diverse as Nicaragua, Mexico and New York City. Her current doctoral research, undertaken at the Lancaster Environmental Centre in the UK, focuses on the conservation benefits of engaging local people in the process of conducting biodiversity research.
Daniela Soleri’s formal training was an interdisciplinary mix of anthropology and plant sciences, resulting in a PhD in ethnoecology with a minor in plant sciences from the University of Arizona. Her research has focused on small scale agriculture, often in centers of crop origin and diversity, investigating farmers’ knowledge and practices, and the implications of those for food production, crop diversity and technology creation and adoption.
Citizen Science in Informal Science Institutions
October 2011
Kate Crawford
Association of Science-Technology Centers
Project Manager
Communicating Climate Change
Lila Higgins
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles
Manager, Citizen Science and Live Animals
Community Science Program
David Sittenfeld
Museum of Science, Boston
Forums Director
Toxic Traffic
Kate Crawford is the project manager for the Communicating Climate Change Project (or C3) at the Association of Science-Technology Centers in Washington, DC. C3 supports a network of 12 science centers and museums developing programs around local impacts of global climate change. Before joining ASTC, Kate’s policy and communications work for political campaigns and non-profits took her from Abu Dhabi to Alabama (and a few places in between). She holds a BS in Physics from MIT.
Lila Higgins is a museum educator with 10 years of experience in environmental education, exhibit development, and citizen science programming. In late 2008 she joined the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles (NHM) working in the Education & Exhibits department. She oversees the Museum’s Community Science and Live Animal programs, and is also the lead educator on the Museum’s newest indoor/outdoor exhibit, focused on public participation in urban biodiversity research. Prior to working at the NHM, Lila worked on both coasts in many non-profit and governmental organizations. She has a broad background with expertise in areas other than museum education, including volunteer management and biological control research. Lila holds a bachelor’s degree in entomology from University of California, Riverside and a master’s degree in environmental education from California State University, San Bernardino.
David Sittenfeld is manager of the Forum program at the Museum of Science (http://www.mos.org/events_activities/forum/forum_archive), which engages citizens, policymakers, and scientists in deliberative conversations around emerging scientific and technological issues. Linking a forum to citizen science, David recently worked with the Cambridge Public Health Department and Boston area high school students on a project called Toxic Traffic, where students shared results of their work to monitor motor vehicle pollution and explored with community members potential links between air quality and health concerns such as asthma. In addition to overseeing the Museum’s Forum program, David regularly gives talks on topics in current science and technology at the Museum, delivers demonstrations in the exhibit halls, and manages special programs and exhibit projects. He is a member of the executive committee for Expert and Citizen Assessment of Science and Technology (http://ecastnetwork.org), has served on the program committee for the Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network (http://nisenet.org) for five years, and is a member of the outreach planning committee for the Northeastern Section of the American Chemical Society (http://www.nesacs.org/).