GU Webinars on Citizen Science: Linking Nordic Animals to Biodiversity Observation Networks, 10th December 2021, 10:00-12:00 CET
Dick Kasperowski
University of Gothenburg Webinars
on Citizen Science
Inter/National Connections: Linking Nordic Animals to Biodiversity
Observation Networks
Jesse D. Peterson, The Swedish Agricultural University
Gothenburg University, 10th December 2021, 10:00-12:00 CET
Zoom-link: https://gu-se.zoom.us/j/6218196596
Abstract
During this webinar, Jesse Peterson will reflect on how nonhuman organisms become registered data points for international Biodiversity Observation Networks (BONs). By employing a “following” approach (employed by geographers and STS scholars alike) based on interviews and physical and digital experiences, he will describe and detail the journey of a Northern Lapwing (Vanellus vanellus) from the frozen shores of Fysingens Naturreservat in Sweden to the Swedish Species Observation System (Artportalen) and further to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). Using this approach, he aims to centralise the actors, infrastructures, and protocols that often remain hidden in the digital recording of biological observations through a materialist narrative of a single biodiversity observation and its journey through several nodes of flow and transfer and those whom assist this observation on its way. Inviting participants to make critical knowledge by way of learning about the “messiness” of data observation chains through the practices of juxtaposition and montage, the presentation places these systems’ facilities, the many actors involved in their execution, and the information pathways that connect the multi-scalar operations at work in this monitoring effort alongside each other. Following this journey shows how the mediation of a “natural-being” into an observation tests the limits of this data infrastructure, produces sociological data simultaneously and raises issues related to intimacy, “dataveillance,” and competition.
Bio
Jesse D. Peterson is a postdoctoral researcher at SLU's Department of Ecology in Uppsala, Sweden. He is a social science and humanities scholar that researches conceptual, technological, and physical changes and how these changes inform and shape human relationships to environmental phenomena. His research illustrates how interest groups (including scientists, policymakers, artists, etc.) ascribe meaning, value, and purpose to environmental phenomena in contemporary and historical contexts through cultural, social, and creative analyses and methodologies. He completed his PhD with the Environmental Humanities Laboratory, at the Department of History of Science, Technology, and Environment at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. He also earned an MSc in Environmental Humanities and an MFA in Poetry and Translation. His postdoctoral research queries biodiversity loss and how digital technologies shape the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of naturalists, scientists, and participating members in citizen science projects focused on conservation and ecology. Specifically, he is involved in researching the adoption of digital database technology and the spread of biodiversity data, the challenges citizen science pose to pre-existing ethical guidelines and policies, and how AI influences biodiversity observers and observations. His PhD dissertation presents his research on the global problem of cultural eutrophication—a form of ecological change characterised by nutrient pollution, algal blooms, and dead zones. Focusing on the Baltic Sea, this study attempts the first in-depth analysis of cultural eutrophication from a humanities perspective in order to identify values and meanings attached to water, nutrients, algal blooms, and dead zones, to argue for understanding the creation of waste as ecological rather than social, and to develop alternative narratives among other aims. He is also co-editing a book on how objects, places, and discourses assist in delimiting the dead and dying in order to show how matter and story congeal into practices that inform understandings of not only human death but the death of other creatures and environments.
The webinar is part of the series on new developments in the field of citizen science. Citizen science is here to be interpreted in the broadest sense, including different participatory research activities in the natural and social sciences and the humanities, as well as community based initiatives. We welcome presentations and discussion papers on the phenomenon of citizen science in both historical as well current settings. Contact: dick.kas...@gu.se niclas...@gu.se