Keynote Lecture - Deborah Bolnick

How Academic Diversity is Transforming Scientific Knowledge in Biological Anthropology

Academia has seen a concerted effort in recent years to expand diversity, equity, and inclusion in STEM fields, and these efforts have been lauded for increasing the involvement of historically underrepresented groups as well as broadening access and increasing justice within the life sciences. However, less attention has been given to the intellectual contributions that diversity brings — new kinds of questions, new concepts and theoretical perspectives, new approaches to research design and ethics, new insights and interpretations of data. In this lecture, I will discuss how academic diversity is transforming scientific knowledge in the fields of biological anthropology and human genetics, yielding new insights about both humans and non-humans, the interconnections between bodies, biology, and culture, and the politics and practice of science. Critically, efforts to change “who we are” means reconstituting “what we know”.

Please register with the subject "Keynote" under soscibio@soziologie.uni-freiburg.de for Zoom-access

The lecture is part of the workshop "Critical Life Sciences", which is a joint event hosted by the SoSciBio Research Group of the University of Freiburg, the Chair for Science and Technology Studies at the University College Freiburg, the Chair for Gender Studies MINT, and the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS).