A conversation about EDIA in the RSE community

Reflections on successes and challenges

Ella Kaye (@ellakaye) and Malvika Sharan (@malvikasharan)
diveRSE

July 31, 2024

Overview

  • Introductions / positionality
  • Malvika and Ella in conversation
  • Open Q&A and discussion with participants

Malvika

  • Researcher, Community Facilitator, The Alan Turing Institute
  • Lead of Research Community Management team - connecting projects, teams, software, communities
  • The Turing Way - a global community-led project on data science practices, advocacy and culture change
  • OLS (formerly Open Life Science) - a global community of learners and practitioners of open science
  • Embedded in open source/science communities, building on RSE movement!

Positionality (Malvika)

under-represented in RSE / minority positions

  • Asian, woman
  • Not really RSE - but RSE adjacent!
  • Advocate of open science and community management in research - often met with skepticism and dismissal

over-represented / privilege

  • cisgender, financial stability, access to privileged groups

Ella

  • Research Software Engineer at University of Warwick
  • Sustainability and EDI in the R Project (with Heather Turner)
    • fostering a larger, more diverse community of contributors to base R
  • rainbowR
  • SSI inclusive

Positionality (Ella)

under-represented in RSE / minority positions

  • woman, gay

over-represented / privilege

  • White, cisgender, global north, financial stability, elite education

Discussion questions/themes

  • What have been our experiences in RSE or research as members of under-represented or over-represented communities?
  • What challenges have we faced when pushing for more EDIA in the RSE community?
  • The importance and difficulties of community-building and why it matters from an EDIA perspective
  • Intersectionality between developing an RSE identity and identities as members of groups under-represented in the broader RSE community
  • What are the links between EDIA and justice?
  • Positive examples of groups and initiatives where EDIA was improved

Resources