In addition to promoting equity within the scientific community through both scholarship and practice, I actively contribute to enhancing safety in fieldwork experiences. Recognizing the pivotal role of fieldwork in shaping undergraduate and graduate student trajectories, I address disparities in access and work to mitigate differential exposure to harmful experiences during research, ultimately aiming for more equitable outcomes. As a co-Principal Investigator on the NSF-funded project SAFER, I am involved in combining complex sociotechnical systems theory with state-of-the-art risk analysis techniques to enhance safety protocols for scholars conducting research in remote settings. This project has ambitious goals, including building a large-scale, cross-disciplinary database of incidents experienced by scientists in the field, identifying various incident types, their causal and protective factors, and understanding the lasting impacts on scientists' well-being and career trajectories. By employing a mixed quantitative and qualitative approach and adopting systems thinking, we aim to produce the first-ever comprehensive dataset on incidents in the field, transcending disciplinary boundaries and establishing new standards for risk reporting. This transformative study will not only shed light on the patterns of risk in field science but also inform best practices for safety management, revolutionizing the approach to safety concerns during data collection in wilderness locations. Read more here! Most importantly, get involved here!

Also, the headwound photo is from a NOLS WFR training exercise! No damage done.