Marginalia Science is a community of social scientists who are dedicated to promoting and learning about the work of scholars who are "on the margins". We are committed to including, integrating, advocating for, and promoting members and their work, especially those who are female, non-gender conforming, POC, LGBTQIA+, differently abled or in any other way not promoted by the status quo in academia.
We send out a monthly newsletter that highlights new papers from our community and includes a "guest editor" section that spotlights early-career researchers. In addition, we not only highlight new research from members of our community, but also help demystify the process of navigating the academic job market.
Last year, we were awarded a Community Catalyst Grant from SPSP. This grant enabled us to host an in-person community meetup during the SPSP 2024 Annual Convention in San Diego. This meetup provided an opportunity for our members, who are primarily underrepresented scholars, to connect and interact in an informal setting, without the pressures of traditional conference networking.
The meetup was a happy-hour style gathering, organized by Ivy Gilbert, Eliana Hadjiandreou, Minjae Kim, and Jordan Wylie. We estimate that around 30 people attended the event. Attendees included both current members of the Marginalia Science community, and conference attendees who were new to the group; Attendees also spanned academic roles, including post-baccalaureates, graduate students, postdocs, and Principle Investigators (PIs).
We were pleased with the event and believe we were successful in providing an organic opportunity for our community to connect. We were glad to see attendees interacting across academic roles, and engaging in relationship-building in a relaxed manner, as afforded by the casual environment. We believe we came away from the evening as a more cohesive community, in line with our aim of fostering belonging in social science.
In addition, we felt reinvigorated in our mission to promote the work of marginalized scholars. The meetup served as a way for our community members to participate actively in planning the future of Marginalia Science. Through our discussions, we came up with some next steps for our community and for our newsletter. One goal for the next few years is to grow Marginalia's symposium series by inviting more scholars to share their work with a wide audience. At these symposia, talks from early career researchers will be streamed online to the broader academic community. A short-term idea, which we have already implemented, was to dedicate a newsletter to covering exciting new work presented by marginalized scholars at the SPSP 2024 Annual Convention.
We were very grateful for the opportunity to strengthen our network and brainstorm ways to promote the visibility of scientists on the margins. We hope to be able to organize similar events for Marginalia Science in the future.
To learn more, visit the Marginalia Science website.
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