An important part of collaborative research, and indeed of open science, is compassion. We’re too-often inclined, as a community, to act as though science - that it is supposed to be evidence-based or data-driven - is somehow pure, objective, and above bias. In reality, science is produced by humans, and falls prey to the same implicit biases that humans have. This is reflected in the science and research we do, and in the communities of scientists and researchers who create the science.
Open Life Science is a program that revolves around community building - creating healthy, friendly, caring, and inclusive communities. Part of this includes learning to step up for others when you notice something unfair, exclusionary, or discriminatory, and if you are in a position of privilege and feel safe to speak up – a trait known as “Ally Skills”.
We’re running two virtual Ally Skills training sessions to give interested participants the chance to learn about:
We will run two workshops on December 4 2020 to suit two different timezones. Both workshops have the same content:
Open Life Science is a non-profit organisation. Proceeds will be used to pay trainers for their time and all other funds earned will be used for OLS-specific purposes, such as offering small incubator grants for OLS-2 projects.
Our goals with this workshop are to make ally skills more accessible to others as well as raising money for OLS, but we do not wish to exclude anyone who would find it genuinely difficult to pay for this workshop. If you would like to participate and your organisation is unable to sponsor a full-price ticket, please fill out this short form to request a reduced-price.
Tickets are free to OLS mentors, experts, mentees/project leads, and call hosts - approach us by emailing team@we-are-ols.org for a ticket discount code.
These workshops will be delivered by Malvika Sharan, Emmy Tsang, and Yo Yehudi. All trainers have completed the Ally Skills Train-the-Trainers workshops by FrameShift Consulting and will be using adapted materials from FrameShift Consulting.
Collectively they have delivered Ally Skills workshops at CarpentryCon, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Whitaker lab at the Alan Turing Institute, and short sessions during Open Life Science OLS-1.