As we head into the start of Spring, SCANZ is launching an online Month of Learning.
Hosted over four weeks, this is a series of online talks designed to expand and build upon the conversations from our 2026 SCANZ conference.
We want to continue exploring ideas and practices that are shaping our field and bring together people who are curious to learn, question, and connect.
Bring your lunch and settle in.
Registration
Click here to register and be emailed the Zoom details.
Week 3
12:00 - 12:05 pm - Welcome
12:05 - 12:55 pm - Speakers (10 mins each)
12:55 - 1:00 pm - Wrap up
Speakers
(in order of appearance)
Mary Duff, Author / Project Coordinator, Mavesther Books
Lais Camargo Novaes, PhD Candidate, University of Canterbury
Mike Dickison, Wikipedia consultant, Rove
Allanah Robinson, Science Communicator, Shared Science
Topics
A whale of a story
Mary Duff, Author / Project Coordinator, Mavesther Books
In this presentation, Mary Duff explores how storytelling can bridge the gap between scientific knowledge and community understanding. Drawing on her recent experience of researching and completing her debut children's nonfiction narrative book, A Discovery in the Rocks, Mary will discuss how the power of narrative is used to translate complex scientific ideas into accessible, place-based stories. She will reflect on the influence of Professor Ewan Fordyce, whose warm, generous manner helped local communities appreciate the scientific significance of the fossils beneath their feet. Mary believes that effective science communication is not only about accuracy, but about connection and lived experience — emotional, cultural, and intergenerational — ensuring science is something communities feel part of, not separate from. It can also lead to commercial entities such as the significant tourist attraction of the Waitaki Whitestone UNESCO Global Geopark.
Exploring science identity through extra-curricular educational activities in favelas in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Lais Camargo Novaes, PhD Candidate, University of Canterbury
After a colonial period that lasted over 300 years, Brazil’s “shout of independence” in 1822 was not loud enough to erase the social-economical inequalities that permeate the country’s systems to this day. Such inequalities are key elements to the establishment and maintenance of the political polarisation that swayed the country in the recent decades. Brazil has been watching a rise of ideologies built on denialism and misinformation, where anti-science discourses are able to thrive. Amid this context, and within the community of Cidade de Deus, in Rio de Janeiro, a partnership between the Presbyterian Institute Alvaro Reis (INPAR) and the social project Ad Astra Academy plays an important role of providing marginalised students with opportunities to discover and explore science beyond regular school hours. Between 2024 and 2026 our research team joined forces with INPAR to redesign Ad Astra’s curriculum and run two new project iterations, reaching a total of thirty-eight students of ages 11 to 17. In this talk, we explore how place-based, cross-cultural, and geoscience-focused activities were used to foster students’ science identity through a mixed-methods approach study. The study included a pre- and post-test Student Science Identity survey, along with interviews with the project instructors. Positive shifts in students’ science identity were observed across both quantitative and qualitative data, highlighting the potential of short-term geoscience experiences to foster students’ identification with science.
Developing a Wikimedia strategy for a research organisation
Mike Dickison, Wikipedia consultant, Rove
Wikipedia is an increasingly important public information resource, a source for Google searches and AI summaries. Citations in Wikipedia send a significant number of readers to journal articles online. So research organisations need to take Wikipedia seriously, and have a plan for engaging with it. There are a number of practical steps an organisation can take to improve Wikipedia content around its research programme, spotlight its researchers, and make journal articles more discoverable. Using examples from recent work with the National Science Challenges and several Centres of Research Excellence, I will walk attendees through building a Wikimedia strategy that covers not just Wikipedia but the image repository Wikimedia Commons, the open database Wikidata, and community events with volunteer editors.
Communicating uncertainty with numbers
Allanah Robinson, Science Communicator, Shared Science
In this short talk, Allanah Robinson (Shared Science) will explain some of the statistics we regularly see in research, including p-values, confidence intervals and margins of error, and how many people you really need for a reliable political poll. She’ll look at the difference between variability (real differences in the world) and uncertainty (limits on what we know), why this distinction matters, and what it means for explaining research findings. The aim is to give science communicators more confidence when faced with numbers, and to share ideas for talking about uncertainty in ways that make our communication clearer and more trustworthy.
More information
If you have any questions about this event or would like more information, send us an email.