Join me at Evolution 2025 for a research update — and the IDEA plenary

UPDATE: The live-stream of the talk will be available on the Evolution 2025 YouTube account, opening up at 6:45pm Eastern time.

The Evolution 2025 conference kicks off soon in Athens, Georgia, and I’m preparing not one but two presentations for the joint meeting of the American Society of Naturalists, Society of Systematic Biologists, and the Society for the Study of Evolution.

On Friday night, I have the privilege of giving the IDEA Award plenary talk, at 7pm in the conference center’s theater and streaming online at the conference website. The talk is part of the recognition for the 2024 IDEA Award, which I’m honored to receive in recognition of my work with the Queer in STEM project on LGBTQ folks’ experiences in scientific and technical careers. Here’s the abstract for the talk, which I’m titling “No data speaks for itself — but with data, we can speak for ourselves”

As scientists, we are often tempted to think that particular facts — data — inevitably lead to particular conclusions. We really ought to know better. This is perhaps all the more true in evolutionary biology. Evolutionary biologists are deeply familiar with the misuse of natural history by creationists, and we have spent most of the history of our field pruning away the strangling vines of white supremacy and eugenics. I’ve also seen the gap between data and conclusions in my work with the Queer in STEM project, which set out to document the diversity and experiences of LGBTQ people working in science — and the conditions that let us thrive and contribute to our fields. Here, I’ll recount the origins of Queer in STEM and its key findings, and place the project in the broader context of research on LGBTQ peoples’ participation in science. I’ll also discuss how colleagues can learn from my experience to collect and use data in advocating for broader, fairer participation in our field, and the challenges we all face in doing so.

Then, on Monday, 23 June at 4pm in Athena IJ, I’ll present a submitted 15-minute talk with updates from the lab’s work with Joshua trees and yucca moths, as part of the concurrent session on Flowers and Pollination. Come and bring questions, or let me know if you want to grab a coffee between sessions.