Thanks, Hugh. Thank you very much, Eva. I'm gonna try to share my screen now, and let's see which which one. And I think it should be this. So is that showing okay?

Perfect. So, yeah, as Val said, I have been working in the area of data for decision making for a few years now, and I am currently a deputy director at ResearchICT Africa in Cape Town. But prior to that for, you know, about twelve, thirteen years. I was at the University of Washington in Seattle, which is where I did the work I'm going to talk about today. I am still based in in Seattle. The project I'm I'm going to discuss was a collaboration between two units at the University of Washington. One was the technology and social change group at the UW Information School, and the other being the Ocean Nexus, which is at the school of marine and environmental affairs, also at the university. And so I was there from, you know, about 2019 to 2023 was when this project took place. And so I just want to say a little bit about the the projects that was the genesis of this this this, the the program that was the genesis of this this project. And so the broad framing of this was within the ocean nexus program, which is a program that seeks to provide guidance for the governance of oceans in the interest of social and human equity. And it has a broad frame of, you you know, values of anti racism. So this is, you know, being committed to taking action to dismantle systemic inequities within decision making processes and their outcomes. Also a commitment to empathy, which is prioritizing the dignity and well-being of people and to ensure that in essence, in the research context, to ensure that relationships are more important than research outputs. And then decolonization, the third value where the goal is to uplift the narratives of people that have been marginalized historically and to promote trust building and sort of deconstruction of the prior inequities. So, in today's presentation, I will sort of describe a little bit about this project, which we call OD4D, which is an inclusive ocean data for development project. I'll explain a little bit about the conceptual foundations of the project, touch just very briefly on the methodology, and then some of the key, you know, takeaways observations that we had from the project. A little bit about myself again. I just want to contextualize all of this by saying that I am not a marine scientist. I am not a computer scientist. I'm a social scientist. And my interests have been in the relationship between digital and social inclusion and the impact of computing technologies on social economic development, especially in Africa, but also around the world. I've been partly Western trained and partly what non Western trained. I come from a relatively middle class background in Ghana, where I was born and lived for most of my life. And so this has shaped the way that myself and my colleagues who worked on this project sort of engaged with the topic and the people that we worked with. I always like to note that we struggled with our own sense of identity. We've struggled with our awareness of privilege, privilege in relation to some of the communities that we're interested in. We've struggled with the inclusiveness of our own practice, even though we're trying to promote inclusiveness ourselves. And even our authority to talk about topics like inclusion, indigenous methods, traditional knowledge, and coming, as I said, from a place of having been partially Western trained. So I don't claim to be an expert on on these topics. However, I do hope that our reflections and suggestions would be useful to anyone that's seeking new ways or different ways to to fully collaborate with the communities that you want to work with despite the associated risks and challenges of this. So I'm hoping that today we will have, you know, maybe more conversation and, you know, just sharing ideas, especially to get your thoughts on whether you think, you know, that these ideas make make sense. So the the overall purpose of the project was to explore ways to foster database marine decision making, processes that are more inclusive and representative of the different realities in the of people in our communities. A key observation that we had made from the literature that we looked at was that, as well as our own lived experiences actually, was that many groups such as those that are less educated, less wealthy, do not fully participate in the processes that generates the knowledge that policymakers use to make decisions. And yet these groups are often the ones that are most affected by those decisions. And so they may be negatively affected by the changes to marine, the marine environment. But then they're also a negatively or most negatively affected by the policies that are enacted to address the the, issues of marine protection. And so that was one of the things that we felt needed to change. And we were, you know, thinking about whether it's possible for all aspects of knowledge generation to be inclusive. And in this particular instance, you know, when it comes to research, of course, research is specialized, right? So you need to know how to do research. You need to have a particular set of skills. But again, we're wondering, is it possible to include communities throughout the research process, not just at particular stages? The other thing we noted was that most of the existing resources for to teach data skills not targeted at small organizations. They tend to be targeted at large business oriented, well resourced organizations. And they rarely consider issues of equity and social justice. And finally, we had also observed that there's a general tendency for scientists to assume that traditional or indigenous knowledge is not science. And then so they tend to give that kind of knowledge credence only when it aligns with dominant Western sciences. So we wanted to see whether it's possible to encourage more acceptance of different ways of knowing and different ways of generating knowledge. So and our idea was that, you know, what this could lead to more inclusive processes that enable communities to have a stronger voice and be more comprehensively involved, as I said, in all aspects of knowledge generations for the decisions about the environments in which they live. Not only with respect to those decisions that others are making, but also to be able to do their own knowledge generation separate from whatever is going on in the policy making field. So to determine their own information needs and feed that into their own decision making and be able to communicate these to the governing authorities that these are the things that we are interested in. This is the type of knowledge that we would like to have in order to govern our own environment. Now I do want to say that this is not to say that scientists expertise is irrelevant. But we do want to see the extent to which knowledge production can be to some extent democratized while still valuing the, the role of experts in particular knowledge areas. It's also not to say that communities are coherence or their practices are always right or the best. Indeed, the goal of this is to encourage communities to interrogate their own framings of participation to avoid perpetrating other localized inequalities in decision making. For example, it could be based on gender, social economic status and so on. And so that those are also, we recognize that. So the overall project approach to this was we try to engage with in country organization individuals to study, to jointly study community participation in marine decision making processes. And then to use those outcomes to develop an adaptable training tool for community organizations. And this is the book that Val was referring to. So we started with some exploratory work in Hawaii, primarily interviewing scholars and community organizations to gain insights into the interaction between Western and indigenous science and to test whether what we were trying to do even was relevant or appropriate. Then we did, we collaborated with a scholar in Japan to explore oyster farmers knowledge of in response to ocean acidification. And we have a case study in the book that summarizes some of what we learned. And then in Ghana, we examined efforts to protect marine mammals following a beach in events. And we've illustrated some of the findings for that in three case studies in the book. And so we used a range of methodologies from literature reviews to interviews, surveys, focus groups, discussions, and meetings, community engagements, and so on. We also had a running appeal for colleagues and partners to share with us any examples they encountered of truly inclusive or participatory research in coastal communities. And I throw that out to you all because we are still trying to find those those kind of examples. And the last thing to note is that this was a practical project. So the goal was less academic in the sense of trying to generate new knowledge. What we wanted to do was try and generate something that was usable or could be used by community organizations. So a key takeaways, the first and I think foremost observation that we have is that using data to make decisions in an inclusive manner means seeking the highest possible level of community participation and income realities, different age systems, different values at all stages of decision making. And to ask decision making includes the research or the knowledge generation processes that feed into the decision making process. So we are thinking of it from the point of determining what is needed, you know, what needs to be investigated, what is the issue on which a decision needs to be made, right down to the collection of data to inform the decision, and then actually making the decision, and then monitoring the impacts of that decision. To what extent can we include, communities, in every stage of of this this process? Is it even possible? So, our attempts to identify, you know, really participatory projects that include communities as equal partners, in the entire research process was, you know, not very successful. We found few projects that that we could say truly did that. And what we found is that community involvement is usually at the early stages to do some form of needs assessment. Then you go away, come back at the end to validate the results. If communities are involved in the process at all in the interim, it's usually in the form of labor. So they help with data collection or they have no key informants. They help you to get access to the areas that you want to get access to. But it was rare to find instances where members were participating in research design, deciding what types of knowledge and information is important, contributing to data analysis and interpretation and helping to develop decision options, for example. And this is despite the fact that these days it's generally agreed that stakeholder consultation and engagement is an essential part of any decision making process. But I'm sure we all know that that is much easier said than done. Could be, you know, for a variety of reasons, you know, communities and social scientists, policymakers often have different data skills. For example, communities like Western scientific knowledge, right? Scientists lack indigenous knowledge. So it's difficult for them to have a conversation. There's usually, as I said, a narrow framing of participation. So, you know, it is only involved in a subset of of the knowledge generation and decision making process. And only, you know, and therefore being unequal partners in in the in the process. Different divergent world views. So it's again, very difficult for community members, for scientists, for policymakers to engage from each other's perspective. And in fact, often the burden is on communities, local communities to acquire Western science skills. But you rarely find a situation where scientists are being asked or encouraged or motivated to learn local or non Western methods and to understand those methodologies as well. But also the the that could it could be that the communities are not interested in in participating themselves. And I think I heard that discussed in one of your your previous seminars. Right. It could be for a variety of reasons. You know, they could have had bad previous experiences with with researchers in their community development agents in their communities. They could just not trust the process. Or they simply don't have the time, the resources, the interest to participate. How do you deal with that? And then, you know, this assumption that communities are homogeneous. So if you just pluck one person from the community and put them in your group, then you've achieved inclusion. Whereas, you know, it is a fact that communities are very diverse and to get true representation, you might have to include a wider variety of people. So our emphasis you know, ultimately ended up being more on distinguishing inclusive decision making from price practices that end up only being superficially included, even with the best intention of researchers sometimes. And they just don't end up being as inclusive as they they meant to be. So these are here, I won't go into this in too much detail. I think they're self mostly self explanatory. These are some of the key principles and values that we extracted from talking to people from the the the literature. And that these are some of the important things that would assist, in essence, almost in a mindset shift. If you want to be truly inclusive, you do have to achieve this shift in your mind first. And these are some of the things that you would need to understand, you know, recognize different forms of knowledge and ways of knowing understand that relationships and relationality are everywhere. So you may be focusing on a particular issue. And as scientists, we usually have a very specialized, area we're interested in, but understand that it's connected to a lot of other things. And you have to somehow, always be aware of how what you do affects a lot of other aspects of society. No. Even if you can't do anything about it, be aware of of it and what those the implications might be. One of the things that I like and I actually still struggle with how to really operationalize it is the idea of knowledge and accountability. So we are we are accountable to the knowledge that we we acquire and use and the relationships that are embedded in that knowledge, which means respecting, you know, the knowledge that has been shared with us, respecting the people that shared it with us. And, you know, the impact that the decisions we make based on what they have given us could have on them. So we have to somehow try and navigate that. And the last one here, all methods have validity, could be, you know, challenging for for for a lot of us, depending on how strongly you feel that particular methods, whether they are qualitative or quantitative or or other other approaches, whether they are valid forms of research. Another important sort of mindset issue is being able to reflect on your position in relation to the people that you are working with and the knowledge that you are developing. So sort of that that's one of the first steps in preparing your mindset is to reflect on your place in the world. You know your identity, how it affects the way you see other people, how other people also you know relates with you. So if you're especially if you're trying to do development, if I come from Ghana originally, but whenever I go back to Ghana to work, I am aware that people see me sort of as a foreigner. They see me as somebody who is potentially bringing something something to them. I I have to figure out how to deal with that and make sure that that does not affect or that I I try to mitigate the extent to which this interferes with the the level of inclusivity that I want to have. Because whatever I say, they'd be like, yes, You know? Or that that would be the tendency, you know, because they might think that, yeah, this person knows what they're talking about. They know better than I. They they come from abroad. You know? So, again, sometimes you really have to I don't know if you've ever been in a situation where you're trying to devolve. Is that the right word? Yeah. And, you know, power to to others, and there almost seems to be resistance. So you're

I I think I dropped off for a moment there.

Fantastic. Okay. Sorry about that. Let's see if we can get back to where we were, and I think it was here. And I hope that I should be wrapping up soon. I'll go through them. I can see that I was a little bit overenthusiastic in my preparation. And so I have, you know, about eight more slides, but I'll try and go through them quickly because I'd really like to have time for us to talk. So just moving on very briefly. Another issue to recognize is that decision making cultures that is the pattern of shared values and the behaviors that shape how decisions are made in a particular context. They differ across communities. So it's important for you to acknowledge what your decision making culture is and how it might contribute to different types of exclusion. So if you know your your you prioritize in terms of participants experts versus non experts, naturally non experts are going to be excluded. What does that mean? If your approach to information is data driven versus experience driven, then people who are just saying that, well, your data is saying this, but this is what I personally experienced are going to be excluded. How do you how do you deal with that? Also, like I said, I think I've spoken about this, and that people may not all want to participate. So with these, all these different ways and and levels or degrees to which participation may happen, And what do you want? You know, you can meet people where they are in terms of just allowing them to participate to the degree that they do want to, or you can try to encourage higher levels of participation if that is important. The more positive experiences people have, the more value they will perceive in participating and the more likely they will be to engage more. And so now how do you figure out who should participate and and why? You know, it's easy to see who has been included, but sometimes it's a bit tricky to identify who is not there because, of course, invisibility is is is is, is not obvious. So how do we do this in a conscious manner? And this is a framework that I really like for that purpose of having some intentionality in how you think about who's missing, thinking about who's missing as voices. Right. So not just bodies, but voices in the room, in whatever you are discussing. So the Tiniani had proposed these you know, different types of voices that you might think about and whether or not you've accounted for them. Unknown voices, as I said, you know, such as undocumented migrants, for example, you know, they're invisible from from the mainstream. Silent voices, you know, such as, you know, people with disabilities, maybe homeless populations, you know, they're just not able to communicate what their their realities and needs are. And muted voices might be people like refugees. I mean, some context, women, children, and heard voices might be, you know, people that do not use technology. If your main methods of engagement are technology focused, nomadic populations that, you know, it's just difficult to reach them. And ignored voices in the research context could be, for example, people that get folded into the other category when you're doing your your data analysis. So we can talk about all that that sort of the factors that contribute to these types of marginalization, which could range from the access to technology, the geographic location, and their life circumstances, language, knowledge of particular subject matter, all these could lead to some forms of marginalization. So when trying to have that genuine participation, These are some of the the prompts that we were thinking could help to make us more intentional in in in what we what we are trying to achieve with inclusion. So you're thinking about who who is participating in the process and why them. Right? What can you do to broaden participation? And I should say what, if anything, can you do to broaden participation? Because you can't have everybody in the room. Right? So you you have to, in essence, exclude some people. The important thing is to understand why those groups are being excluded and to see whether even if they excluded, right, then the next thing is, are their agendas, are their realities, are their interests and needs being represented? And so then you're asking the question, you know, whose points of view agendas are being prioritized, whose realities are reflected and whose are not? And then what can you do to broaden that representation or to mitigate that lack of representation? So we try to do the best we can to increase participation, increase representation. And if we cannot, then what can we do to ensure that that lack of participation or represent representation does not have negative impacts on on the the communities. So these, I mean, I won't go through this because I think you you can go to the book and you'll see what's what's these this is all, like, except from the book. Some sheets that help to think through how to identify the voices in your community, how to decide whether or not they should be included, how to ensure that if they are not included, they are represent, they are represented. And and how to then also ensure that once they are included, the inclusion is genuine. It's it's it's real. So I won't go to that. I want to just go to this being my last slide where I just want to note that I mean in reality as I said it was easier said than done, and we we were not necessarily able to achieve all that we had wanted to achieve for this project. COVID nineteen you know, sort of just derailed completely collaborative plans because we wanted to actually go on to sites in Japan, in Ghana, in Hawaii and and and work with our partners there, but we could not travel. And so we had a lot less of that kind of inclusive practice that we ourselves had hoped for. And then the the one of the most expensive, aspects of trying to be inclusive is time. And, it takes a lot of time to build the relationships to foster ownership among the partners. Like I said, sometimes you are trying to be inclusive, but the partners are not quite getting it because they are not used to, you know, that that kind of expectation that they really participate on an equal footing. We had, you know, some struggles ourselves with ceding control. So it's like, yeah, I know this thing needs to be done this way, but the the partners want to do it differently. And, you know, you you sort of have to say, yes, but I'm committed to this inclusiveness, and I have to let them do things their way. One of the interesting things we found was just finding, you know, non Western imagery and and and being able to represent non Western ideas or to represent what I'd say are taken to be Western ideas, but might have some other manifestations in in other cultures. So the example I like to use is the the the representation of an idea. So when, you know, when somebody is representing an idea, it's usually immediately you think of it like a light bulb. That's what that's that's the imagery that, you know, it seems like everybody understands. But then we're like, is it possible that there's a different way of representing this? You know, can we find a different way of representing that? We couldn't find anything online. We're trying to find, you know, representations of communities, and we're just finding all these it's a little bit cringeworthy, you know, images. You see the people sitting around the tree, one of which I think I already showed, but that was a good one because it was it was funny. But, you know, you just have a group of women and, you know, sitting on the floor and and with a flipboard and like, is is there is there possibly other ways, you know, that these communities see themselves and might be represented? And so we again, we we we we struggled with, some of these. And ultimately, as you'll see from the book, we we turn to an artist in Hawaii to get get some images that we felt would, you know, contribute to a broader range of of imagery on the issues that that we have. But I think it's really interesting that it's difficult to find non Western imagery related to research concepts. And I'd be interested to know if, you know, in your community, you have an ideas about what what that might look like. I think I will I will stop here. I've gone well over time, and I look forward to to hearing your questions and and having a discussion. Thank you.

But I did I would absolutely love that. Yes. I'm looking for a way to test this, looking for a way to figure out, is this realistic? You know? Is it even possible? I I think it would be great to to have some ways to test this. Yeah.

Yeah. You're you're absolutely right. And I I I think there are some communities, I should say, not organizations, but communities of actors that suggest to have conversations about this this issue. But I'm not aware of any quite organized, you know, entities that are trying to promote this, especially across different domains.

Completely agree. And the the the irony of it is that everybody kind of knows that this is what should be done, but it just feels like there's something missing. And I I I I can't pinpoint what it is, whether it's the will, whether it's politics, whether it's, you know, agendas. But somehow, you know, people would say, like, how do you do it? It's like, how do you do just do it? You know, it's it's it's been kind of difficult to figure out what the issue is. I I'm sure if you look back, you know, decades from now, you know, this conversation was already happening, but we still haven't been able to figure it out.

missing. Interesting. Yeah. Well, maybe this group can do that.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, in academia, we we tend to specialize. Right? So it's, I mean, it's it's really difficult to find any programs where the goal is to say how can we integrate western and non western research methods? Because my my point is not that we should shift to indigenous methods or traditional methods. My point is that we should try and find ways to use them together. And and that is the real challenge. If you can find, you know, a group of scientists that can do that truly. I mean, we've we've gone through what, inter multidisciplinary research, interdisciplinary research, transdisciplinary. I think transdisciplinary now is the the framing that's trying to to do this. I don't know how successful it has been, but I think, you know, there are movements that are trying to see how we can do this work across domains, but I'm not sure yet across research traditions because people are so invested in of, you know, of this your scholarship? So I I think that that's the that's the challenge. And for me, I was not particularly especially trained in any of these. I was trained more, as I said, as a social scientist, and I'm more inclined towards qualitative research methods. But it feels like common sense to me, to be honest. And and I I think the more we can talk about it with people of like mind, maybe we can explore and try and find ways to actually, productively, you know, have conversations about how different research, traditions can, lead to better forms of knowledge.

I really appreciate the presentation. I'm sorry. I came in late. I'm gonna have to go watch the first half of the recording. I wanted to jump in and say, when we mix methods, people from at least what I've seen, people from the Western tradition of knowledge production are able to get paid for their part in the collaborative research. But the broad number of additional participants of additional hypothesis generating, research conducting, thinking people are kind of left out in, like, a, like, unfunded civic action space. And I just wanna say it's extremely productive to break down the boundaries between science and politics, but the institutions are not going to pay for that. It's a liberatory process. Yeah. Yeah. What do you what do people think?

Yeah. Yeah. I cannot agree with you more. That's that's the sad thing about this. In fact, if in the work we're doing, one of the issues that we were challenged by was, like, was that we we want to work with community organizations, but our budget was really small, really, really, really small for this project. And, I mean, I think it's, like, $20,000 And we're like, you know, it's our job. Like, we are getting paid to do this work. But if we're asking for a a community organization to collaborate with us, that's apart from their job that they already do. You know? So we're we're asking them to use their personal time effectively or somehow to weave this into their everyday activities without any compensation other than the joy of, you know, being being part of the project. And so we really, really, really struggled with that and trying to find a way to give as much of that money as possible to the organizations that we were working with, not as payments per se, but as acknowledgment that we we we are taking what we're asking them to take time away from from their work. And we want we don't want to interfere with the organizations that we work with in Ghana, for example, we had the budget and we said, we have this small amount of money. What do you want to do? You tell us what you want to do with this money, and we'll do it with you. And so that was how we try to But achieve to some edge together. So they chose the topic. They designed their research, and we just went along with it. But it's yeah. It is a challenge.

Have you did you previously reference anything about, like, the history of exclusion of participatory action research from the academy? And my my, Bandwidth may be lagging here. Did you hear that?

Not I'm not the best person to give this history, but participatory action research and community based participatory research was huge in the sixties and seventies. A roaring tradition that came out of Latin America. It was part of Freire's work with community liberation. It turned into, you know, peasant land back movements that, you know, the world over that one, you know, hundreds of millions of acres of land returned back to the people who were stewarding it. And this was this work was driven by participatory action research where that that organized communities who are working towards self governance and who knew they needed more knowledge in order to make better decisions. And the this is this is a huge global movement. It traces its it goes even back farther a century to Kurt Lewin who first created action research, and it's in the John Dewey philosophical tradition of that truth must be useful. And work of this kind has been has just not been able to get a foothold in in formal institutions of higher education. So, yeah, I guess I just wanna say this is an enormous field that keeps getting rediscovered and has an institutionality problem. So, yeah, it seems like people in the chat have a lot of ideas about that, and we could probably get someone better than me to give this historic history to us and help us imagine if there's anything that meta governors could do in response.

Yeah. I'm sorry. I think I have an unstable connection, so I was cutting in and out. But I did get the gist to your your your your comments, and I I I do agree. I also think one of the the trends that that

work.

I I found my microphone.

So, I mean, the key thing about my protocol is that it is designed to not be gameable, which is to say that the main problem with a lot of distributed funding is that there are ways to participate in the system that people would consider cheating. And, so that's what I'm trying to put forth here. It's a it's a it's a very open it's it's transparent, but it innately has something I believe called incentive compatibility, which is you get the best results if you tell the truth. So I'm trying to prove that sort of mathematically right now, and I've been engaging with Jonathan about that a little bit, so that's been useful. But so I'll just kind of, you know, make you aware of how this is progressing. I have a little proof of concept that I developed, and I'm going to generalize it, hopefully, by the end of the month, and then I'll send it on to whoever is interested. But it's it's great for these sort of retroactive funding or any type of community distributing, any type of funding where they wanna make sure that that there aren't power dynamics that gives gives some people, more control over where that funding goes than others.

Yeah. There's if you have equal participants, there's still a group, and you're either, you know, enfranchised or not. Yeah. It's sort of binary the way it's set up. So you'd certainly want to have representation in that core group proportional to the underlying, you know, stakeholders that are being represented. So, you know, you might have a 100 people making allocation decisions or a thousand people making allocation decisions or whatever else, but you wanna decide, you know, the proportions of that group fairly well.

Sounds good.

I think I'm I'm I'm hesitating to speak because I feel like as soon as I speak, my connection drops, but let's see how it goes. Yeah. No. I I think that's definitely what I aspire towards. I I won't I wouldn't say that I have been successful, especially in the academic setting I was working in. That wasn't a research approach that was easy to get the resources to implement. So we just try to get as close as possible to that as we can. But I almost feel like the living lab kind

of of idea would come closest to what I wish I could do. Well, it's not that you're seeing a place as a lab, but I mean, the whole of life is a lab. Right? We're all experimenting in one way or other. So sort of, you know, having that approach to to research where it's just integrated into into that that

I'm about to speak again.

Alright. Let's sweep it up for her. Come on.

So much. Great.