April meeting: (de)colonization of bio archives with Lidia Ponce de la Vega

[Devon Olson]

Hello my dear Information Maintainers!

I am overjoyed to announce that our April 16th speaker is Lidia Ponce de la Vega, who will be visiting with us about the epistemic (de)colonization of Latin American nature and biodiversity in digital archives. I am VERY excited to discuss with Lidia the reverberating effects of colonization on peoples and ecosystems, especially how categorization influences the relationships we have with those organisms, as well as the life those organisms and ecosystems lead.

I promise that we didn't plan this to coincide with Earth Day, because, at least personally, I believe we need to do better by the earth EVERY day. Starting yesterday.

Anyway, so many thanks to Lidia for agreeing to join us! And here is the bio she so kindly provided to us:

Lidia Ponce de la Vega is a Doctoral Candidate in Hispanic Studies at McGill University and holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts (Gabino Barreda Medal) in Hispanic Language and Literature from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and a Master of Arts in Hispanic Studies from McGill. She currently works as a Digital Humanities Course Lecturer at McGill. Her research is a critical analysis of the Biodiversity Heritage Library and focuses on the epistemic (de)colonization of Latin American nature and biodiversity in digital archives.

And if you want to learn even more about Lidia in the lead-up to her visit, here is a post she wrote on the Biodiversity Heritage Library's blog: "Towards Online Decoloniality: Globality and Locality in and Through the BHL"

Stay tuned for meeting registration and timing details!

Hope to see you soon!

Devon

Information Maintainers Co-Facilitator