Seminar to explore hostile workplace climates in the sciences

August 31, 2016

University Relations

Kathryn Clancy will discuss the factors that can create a hostile workplace climate for women in the sciences during the Life Sciences Seminar at 3 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 16, in the Murie Building auditorium.

Clancy, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois, will discuss the historical context and existing conditions that make a hostile workplace climate more or less likely in the sciences. She will draw on datasets in the field sciences, astronomy and planetary science and physics. She'll also discuss individual career consequences, and broader consequences for scientific discovery, from a hostile climate.

Clancy received her doctorate in anthropology from Yale University and a joint honors bachelor's degree in biological anthropology and women’s studies from Harvard University. Her research integrates life history, evolutionary medicine and feminist biology to contest clinical definitions of normal in women’s health.

Clancy’s critical research on the culture of science has received widespread attention. She and her colleagues demonstrated the problem of sexual harassment and assault in the field sciences in a 2014 paper in the PLOS ONE academic journal. Upcoming publications will analyze problems in the fields of astronomy and physics.

This event is sponsored by the International Arctic Research Center, the Institute of Arctic Biology, the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and the Nanook Diversity and Action Center.