I work as the Senior Program Manager of the Events Fund at Code for Science and Society (CS&S). This position builds on my work as a Network Coordinator for the Open and Collaborative Science in Development Network (OCSDNet) (2014 – 2018), where I organized and helped support global open science practitioners and scholars who have since gone on to be leaders in their fields.
I come to the practice of open science concerned with issues of equity and the politics of knowledge. My approach is influenced by first-hand observations of how those studied as subjects of scientific knowledge production increasingly question the benefits of research. This was the context for seven years of doctoral research looking at practices of knowledge production in Nairobi, Kenya. I am finishing up my doctorate in the Anthropology Department at the University of California, Irvine with expected completion in December 2021. In support of this project, I received a Wenner-Gren fieldwork grant, a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation and a 2018 UC Berkeley Center for Technology, Society and Policy Fellowship.
I was co-editor for the open-access book Contextualizing Openness: Situating Open Science (University of Ottawa Press) and founded and manage an experimental, open ethnographic data portal called Research Data Share (www.researchdatashare.org). I serve on the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) Council, as a Design Team member of the Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography (PECE), and on the editorial collective of Engaging Science, Technology and Society, the open-access journal of the Society for the Social Studies of Science.
From 2010-2015 in previous positions leading research at iHub, Nairobi’s innovation hub for the tech community, I provided strategic guidance for growth of tech research in the region and managed a team of twenty people to surface information useful for the technology ecosystem. At iHub Research, I also directed the pioneering Umati project, monitoring dangerous speech online in Kenya; documented mobile usage patterns at the Kenyan base of the pyramid; and developed a framework to test the viability of crowdsourcing during elections.
Prior to moving to Kenya in 2010 on a Fulbright fellowship, I was involved in corporate outreach to engage businesses in dialogue on sustainability at the World Wildlife Fund (Washington, DC, USA). I have experience working with infoDev (World Bank), the US State Department, and the Environmental Law Institute (ELI). A graduate of Georgetown University’s Science, Technology & International Affairs program, I have also studied project management through the University of Cape Town.
Angela Okune 