Biodiversity for Belonging
5 years of multisensory outreach challenging ableist barriers to evolution literacy

2nd May 2025 4PM CET/10 AM EST

Informal Educator

See this webinar at https://youtu.be/vX3ISOXVCPg

The under representation of people with disabilities in ecology & evolution research is deeply linked with vision-centric teaching modalities lacking multisensory alternatives. The pervasive assumption is that, overall, life sciences are “very visual” fields. Left unexplored and under-researched, such assumptions become systemic barriers.

Five years ago we created the first resource of evALLution, an outreach project dedicated to make biodiversity and evolution literacy accessible for people with blindness. A transdisciplinary team, including people with blindness, developed the multisensory tree of life, where 20 taxonomic groups and several classic examples evolution by natural selection were taught through multisensory modalities. Beyond learning evolution, participants with sensory diversities reported increased sense of belonging when learning about the biodiversity of sensory adaptations in nature.

Since then, we have applied creative approaches in different outreach contexts and produced research showing that multisensory modalities of teaching core evolution concepts not only remove ableist barriers for people with disability, but increase learning for all students.

I’ll share the guiding principles, creative processes, and key lessons—including mistakes—that reshaped our approach towards outreach that moves us from exclusion to evolution.

Know more about Telma G. Laurentino here

EvoKE webinars are held on the first Friday of every month at 4 PM CET/10 AM EST (check here other time zones)