Ecosystem building in action: Science Talk 2025 and the dynamic civic science conference landscape

It feels like yesterday when I boarded a plane for Portland, Oregon, to attend my first in-person Science Talk conference in 2022. Since then, I have attended the conference both in person and virtually, and each time, I leave refreshed with new connections and ideas to follow up on for my own work. I have lost track of the number of people I have hired for my lab, invited to present in my class, or interviewed for appearance on CivicSciTV after meeting them at the conference. Now in its ninth year, the Science Talk 2025 conference is anchored around exploring something I spend a lot of time thinking about: “the importance of ecosystem building over a wide spectrum of science communication activities, and exploring how various areas of scicomm can come together and span boundaries to solve problems and benefit society.” This theme resonates with me personally, as my lab continues to practice civic science journalism as a tool for ecosystem building by visualizing civic science in real-time. 

The big picture

Of course, Science Talk 2025 is one piece of a much larger puzzle of annual meetings across the civic science universe. For example, the recent AAAS conference in Boston was one of the gathering points for science communicators and civic science scholars and practitioners that I attended. Another was the Building Trust in Science for a More Informed Future conference at MIT—a collaboration between the Aspen Institute Science & Society Program and the MIT Press—which took place on March 10, 2025 with the stated aim to “bridge the gap between the evidence-base on how humans process and understand information, and the vulnerabilities to misinformation and propaganda.” Going further back, the Communicating Discovery Science conference in Stellenbosch, South Africa in Nov 2024 “aimed to deepen understanding of effective public engagement around basic or foundational science.” The list goes on.

There are, of course, even more conferences that are upcoming. In May, the National Science Policy Network Annual Symposium (May 2–5) will take place with the aim of helping participants “connect, learn, and get inspired around global challenges,” while the Public Communication of Science and Technology Conference (PCST) in Aberdeen, Scotland (May 27–29) will focus on “using science communication to effect positive change, exploring transitions, traditions and tensions.” Interestingly, the Association for Advancing Participatory Sciences Annual conference will also take place in Portland, Oregon, in late May with the goal of “bringing attention to cutting-edge and evidence-based practices from many contexts, and connect people from across those contexts to highlight areas of innovation, share ideas and insights, and forge stronger relationships and practices across the field.” This summer, the Visualization in Science and Education Gordon Research Conference will take place in Lewiston, Maine (July 13–18) and in the fall, the ASTC Annual Conference will take place in San Francisco (September 6–9).

It is safe to say that this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of conferences that stakeholders have to navigate. We have joined the wagon in attempting to track them through our Conference Tracker.

What’s in store at Science Talk 2025?

This year’s program is packed with activities that blend practical skill-building with cross-disciplinary conversations via workshops, panels, short talks, keynotes, and others. Attendees will find panel discussions with titles such as “Defining Civic Science: Connecting Science and Society, and “Building a Communicating Science Ecosystem at a Land Grant University: Sharing Lessons,” as well as numerous workshops in-person and virtually across several topics. Virtual talks include captivating titles such as “From Lab to Classroom: How Research Communication Inspires Canada’s Next Generation; What does it take to collaborate? Relationship insights from a scicomm research filmmaking partnership; Co-create videogames with scientists: why and how; and Engage: a Model for Multidisciplinary Science Communication Training.” Additional discussions will cover visual design, community building, and strategies for countering science denial. This year, Dr. Mónica Feliú-Mójer and Anand Varma will be the in-person keynote speakers.

A first for the conference

This year marks an important milestone for Science Talk: for the first time, the in-person part of the conference will take place on the East Coast in Raleigh, North Carolina—a continent away from its home base of Portland, Oregon. The virtual sessions, which began on March 10, will run through March 31, ensuring that the conference remains accessible to participants from around the globe. The full agenda and registration details are available at https://www.associationofsciencecommunicators.org/conference.

The bottom line

Science Talk 2025 and all the other conferences in civic science provide vital spaces where prospective and current scholars and practitioners can come together to share lessons, break down silos, and spark new collaborations. These events are needed more than ever. And yes, the dynamic ecosystem of conferences also provides opportunities to continue asking important questions incluidng the origins of such meetings, articulation of the value proposition, goals and impact, challenges experienced by organizers, accessibility and sustainability, attendee demographics, participants’ key takeaways; and well, so much more.

Do you plan to attend any of the upcoming conferences mentioned above? Let us know what your goals are in attending them in the comments below.

Fanuel Muindi

fmuindi@saicollective.org

Fanuel Muindi is a former neuroscientist turned civic science scholar-journalist and entrepreneur. He is a Professor of Practice in the College of Arts, Media, and Design at Northeastern University where he leads the Civic Science Media Lab. Dr. Muindi received his Bachelor’s degree in Biology and PhD in Organismal Biology from Morehouse College and Stanford University respectively. He completed his postdoctoral training at MIT.

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