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The Commons of Conservation Technology? Open Science Hardware for Biodiversity Monitoring
What happens when the worlds of open hardware and ecological research collide? I spent 10 months investigating the social and technoscientific dimensions of the Mothbox, an open source nocturnal insect monitor developed for landscape-scale biodiversity monitoring in remote, tropical environments. Thanks to funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Socio-Environmental Knowledge Commons (SEEKCommons) project, I was able to study how humans, the environment, and technical objects constitute an “open source conservation technology” and how the amalgamation of hacker and field biologist social practices enables the collective governance of resources in the form of the commons.
You can read a brief blog post about the research here, or check out this presentation about the project.
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Undergraduate Student Experiences with Citizen Science Highlight Potential to Broaden Scientific Engagement
I was awarded a grant from the Office of Undergraduate Research at NC State for the 2019-2020 academic year to pursue research on undergraduate student perspectives on citizen science and inclusive implementation of citizen science projects in higher education that can engage groups underrepresented in STEM. This research resulted in a case study published in the 2021 Citizen Science: Theory and Practice Special Collection on Citizen Science in Higher Education.
See a presentation of this research here!