AAS Publishing Launches #BlackSpaceWeek2024 Video Series
Frank Timmes Arizona State University
Black in Astro is partnering with AAS Publishing again this year for BlackSpaceWeek to feature astronomical papers from four Black scholars in the field through the AAS Journal Authors YouTube Series. These video chats will be released during #BlackSpaceWeek2024 (16-22 June) at 9:00 am ET each day; you can visit the AAS Journal Youtube page for the videos each day, or follow the hyperlinks below to view their published papers:
- Zachary Murray: 13 June
- Dakotah Tyler: 17 June
- Amina Diop: 21 June
- Osase Omoruyi: 25 June
Black in Astro is a grassroots organization born in the wake of social unrest in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd. With COVID isolation guaranteeing a captive audience, people in the US and beyond paused to listen to the needs of Black communities on all scales. Unlike many, we at Black in Astro believe that our work didn’t end in 2020. That year we had our inaugural Black Space Week, then called Black in Astro Week, a week chock-full of programming centering Black folks in space-related fields, panels, networking opportunities, and more. Since then, we’ve had such a week every year, fittingly the week of Juneteenth, and each one has only grown larger in scale and impact.
All too often, marginalized people are pigeonholed into equity and diversity work since we’re the most directly impacted by hostile spaces, but the onus should not be on the harmed to repair the harm. Instead, we want to spotlight Black astronomers for their science, the very thing equity work seeks to make it easier to do. For this reason, Black In Astro is proud to partner with the AAS Journal Authors video series again to highlight the work of several incredible Black astronomers, and we all get the pleasure of hearing about their work from their very own mouths.