In a state of ontological crisis, all boundaries between human and machine, nature and culture, and the organic and inorganic have been severely blurred. These are times of curious contrivances, novel natures, inescapable automation, and posthuman performances – where human and nonhuman find themselves being entwined, meshed and muddled into new unwitting entanglements. But from biased machine-learning to surveillance capitalism and digital colonisation – what power-structures are implicitly and covertly being embedded into these technologies?

In a demand for more transparency, multiple movements are making a turn toward democratising knowledge and technology. They are exploring the potentials of open data, software, hardware and wetware to battle concealed hierarchies and partisan paradigms – eliciting a practice of counter-coding in a proliferating politics of machines.

Within the Politics of the Machines conference series – following Copenhagen (2018) and Beirut (2019), the third POM conference will take place as a digital conference on the 14-17 of September 2021, hosted hosted by the chair for Open Science at the Technische Universität Berlin (Einstein Center Digital Future) and the Berlin University of the Arts (Weizenbaum Institute) in Berlin.

The goal of this edition of POM is to debate and devise concepts and practices that seek to critically question and unravel novel modes of science – what roles do academia, researchers, scientists, artists and designers have to take on in times of crisis, how must we re/position ourselves?

What chances or challenges might the democratisation of technology and knowledge elicit, and what potential do practices such as critical making, community science, trans/feminist hacking or citizen forensics hold to bend the hierarchies of power – how can we work with active matter and technical turmoil to re/act?

‘POM Berlin – Rogue Research’ aims to probe new methodological approaches from art, design and civic activism within the framework of academia in order to surface an inter- and transdisciplinary terrain that attempts to exceed the boundaries of theory and practice, academia and activism, and science and civil society.

Christensen, M., Conradi, F., Søndergaard, M., Beloff, L., Choubassi, H. (2022):

Politics of the Machines – Rogue Research. Swindon, UK: British Computer Society.

Track 05: Open Science/Critical Spaces

Track Chairs

• Gameli Adzaho (Global Lab Network, GH)
• Thomas Mboa (Mboalab, CM)
• Khadidiatou Sall (SeeSD, SN)

The movement of open science is rapidly expanding, bringing into being critical spaces that challenge established hierarchies of power. Giving communities the power to redefine their relationship to knowledge and production, labs across the globe are bringing together professional scientists, DIY practitioners, hackers, critical makers and activists to make new artefacts, conduct experiments, produce and analyse data, and to incite social and political change. Connecting open science to sustainable development means instigating bottom-up civic-driven approaches to issues such as education, health, gender, environmental sustainability and urban development. As local knowledge meets open technologies, a possibility to take issue with an unfolding ‘technocoloniality’ emerges – with the logics of coloniality driven by technology, neocapitalist practices, coloniality of knowledge and a rhetoric of techno-utopia. How do these communities assemble and prototype alternative visions, produce knowledge and initiate practices? What issues are being addressed and what potential do they hold? What are the opportunities and challenges of open science for sustainable development?

Inquiries might address topics such as:
– Democratizing science and development
– DIY tech: open source software, hardware and wetware for development
– DIY biology, biotechnology, bioeconomy, open education and environmental activism
– Making in response to crisis
– Spaces and practices of techno-decoloniality

President @Macky_Sall received startups who exhibited at the innovation fair. The State intends to support these project promoters through various structures such as DER. The President welcomed the emergence of female startups, an asset for the Senegalese

By DHR for E-voluntas

SeeSD (Science Education Exchange of Sustainable Development) is a project that promotes the participation of regional and local institutions in Senegal for the design, access and use of open resources in science, technology, engineering and mathematics for basic education. Its objective is to bridge the gap between the curriculum designed in the country’s basic education centers and scientific literacy in primary and secondary students. The project has three basic components:

1. 1. Firstly, it includes the design and inclusion in the educational system of practice-based interactive resources for teaching scientific content. For this, schools are offered resources for their adaptation and inclusion in the academic curriculum of the center and training for teachers to modify and improve their teaching strategies with students.
   2. Secondly, they offer conferences and workshops in which the most relevant aspects of the application of science, technology and engineering content in basic education are discussed. These spaces generate opportunities to create collaboration and exchange networks between teachers, students, professionals and scientists about the creation and development of open educational content in primary and secondary education.
   3. Finally, an online teaching platform based on MOOCs has been developed , called Afreecademy . The contents of this platform have been created by the project participants themselves, with the collaboration of teachers and students from the schools involved.

The development of OER has sometimes had the handicap of starting from a Western perspective of education and of being generated from universities and educational institutions located in Western countries. This has forced entities and organizations from third countries to dedicate resources to the not always successful adaptation of these contents, incorporating changes to adjust them to their values ​​and cultural characteristics. Faced with this, various organizations have promoted the creation of resources from local contexts.. In this sense, a relevant contribution of the OERs has been the promotion of collaborative learning and the production of knowledge by the participants themselves in the teaching and learning process. Although the adaptation and reuse of the contents are at the base of the conception of OER, the ultimate goal is the autonomous management of the educational process by its protagonists. In this way, it becomes a process of production and organization of knowledge by all the agents involved. In a certain way, it supposes a blurring of the border between the teacher and the student , which translates into eliminating the border between the producers and the consumers of educational content.

Participation in the creation and modification of OER can also generate empowerment dynamics, by taking control, autonomy and management of these resources . For example, students can put the acquired skills into play and adopt a critical spirit towards their own learning process, generating new resources (eg, case studies) or proposing changes and modifications to existing educational content. On the other hand, teachers can get involved in strategies related to the adoption of didactic innovations or the incorporation of research results into educational content.

The creation of open educational content can also be an opportunity to disseminate one’s own perspective of reality and knowledge . This can be an opportunity for marginalized or excluded communities that need to value their own history and culture or reaffirm certain values ​​and principles that underlie the dynamics of creating identity and a sense of community. For example, the An-Najah University in Palestine , has created the MOOC ” Discover Palestine “, whose objective is the dissemination of the history and culture of Palestine. In this case, it is an internationalization initiative, to raise awareness, expand the sphere of influence and reinforce the Palestinian identity., which makes use of open educational resources through their adaptation, reuse and localization.

By E-voluntas

Credits : This commentary has been developed as part of the OpenMed – «Opening Up Education in South Mediterranean Countries» project.

By Idrissa Sane, Le Soleil for / The hindu / The dailystar / Tribune de genève

The Centre for Science, Education, Exchange for Sustainable Development (SeeSD) is home to a group of educational mentors, working hard to kindle an interest in science, technology and innovation amongst schoolchildren—notably young girls.

On the first floor of a library building in Dakar, Senegal, two children are busy researching online, tapping excitedly at the keyboard. Through the doors, in one of the huge library halls are several members of the SeeSD team, amongst them is Pape Massar Sow, Head of Technical Operations. The mentor, along with several dedicated teachers, works to promote science amongst Senegalese children.

The reality is that in Senegal, like much of Africa, centuries of colonial rule have seriously handicapped the nation’s scientific development. “The statistics are very sad in general. Only 8 percent of people who are old enough to go college [university] are enrolled. Out of that 8 percent, only 17 percent are studying STEM-related fields,” said Khadidiatou Sall, the female founder of SeeSD. “Women represent less than 30 percent of that 17 percent,” she added. Sadly, in Senegal girls still lag behind boys when it comes to schooling, according to Unicef only 56 percent of the nation’s girls are enrolled in secondary school compared to 74 percent of boys. A lack of funding has also left the Senegalese educational system poorly equipped, “In Senegal, it is not rare to find young people who have passed through the entire secondary education system without ever carrying out an experiment,” confirmed Massar Sow.

Sall, who holds a PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Oregon State University in the United States, has been passionate about science and innovation from an early age. However she was unable to fully nurture this intrigue whilst studying in the Senegalese education system, which leaves little scope for practical work. “There were no workshops to guide me, [to] help me to grow this passion and become an innovator,” Sall explained. Her gradual drift towards biology evolved from the ability to see physical examples of what the teacher was talking about on her own body, “It was not abstract for me and it gave me the chance to think imaginatively,” she said. Sall only laments that physical experiments were not available in other STEM subjects, “I think that I could have become an engineer or a mathematician, for instance, but the teaching was too abstract to inspire me to opt for such careers.”

The scientist knew something had to change and in early 2016, aged 26, she founded SeeSD. Located in the capital Dakar, the organisation aims to switch on the minds of young Senegalese scientists. Eager to attract more girls to STEM, the SeeSD team initially introduced a policy of positive discrimination towards female students, however with a little encouragement girls were in fact more forthcoming than boys in enrolling for the course. At present, girls represent between 60 and 70 percent of the programme’s beneficiaries. “I think they [girls] generally do not choose STEM just because they believe it is too hard for them and that they cannot do it. That is generally down to the societal pressure that makes girls less confident of their abilities,” said Sall.

In the first year, more than 200 children of primary and secondary school age enrolled in the programme. SeeSD hopes that catching them at a young age will mean more opt to specialise in STEM subjects in secondary school and beyond. Mentors use playful, kinetic learning techniques to spark students imagination and curiosity—something out of the ordinary in conservative Senegal. Six year old Maréme Gueye—one of the female students—rejoiced in being part of the programme. When asked what she wants to be when she grows up, the youngster replied, ” Doctor, scientist or engineer.” Such a response would have be almost unthinkable prior to her participation in the programme. SeeSD currently works with 30 girls, all of whom will programme through to high school age, Sall hopes that this accompaniment will see more Senegalese girls with the same ambitions as young Gueye.

For SeeSD, there are still a few issues to iron out; the main one resources and budgets. A frustrated Sall claims that the only limit to the organisation’s ambitions lies in the lack of equipment. The centre is only supplied with microscopes, test tubes and a few pieces of basic equipment, luckily the teachers’ enthusiasm makes up for these mediocre supplies. SeeSD is currently funded through a variety of grants, both Senegalese and from overseas.

The female biologist is forthcoming about her dreams for the future of science in both Senegal and worldwide, stating that she would would like to see more women embarking on scientific careers to prevent the gap between men and women widening any further, as well—and especially—as the gap between the developing world and developed world.

By Erin C. McKiernan in ResearchGate
[Published on Plos Biology / National Library of Medicine – NCBI / ResearchGate]

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