Outreach experiences with Native Scientist in Nature Careers

Ana Teles and Flávia Viana shared their experiences with outreach in their mother tongue with Nature Careers.

Our collaborators Ana Teles and Flávia Viana published an article entitled “Science outreach in my mother tongue” in Nature Careers.

Ana Teles is an evolutionary immunology researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Plön, Germany. She compares the experience of doing science outreach in a second or third language with the experience of doing science outreach in one’s mother tongue.

Flávia Viana is a postdoctoral fellow at the Wellcome-Wolfson Institute for Experimental Medicine in Belfast, UK. She shares her experience of doing science outreach days after moving to a new country, and how this made her feel better and helped her settle down.

Both of them are also Native Scientists collaborators since 2017 and 2015, respectively; Ana is currently our Social Media Content Writer, and Flávia is the Certificates & Artwork Manager.

Joana Moscoso, director of Native Scientist and one of its founders, says: “Back in 2007, when I started my career in science and moved abroad for the first time, I didn’t know that communicating science in my mother tongue while being abroad was an option. Fast forward 14 years, here I am, reading Ana’s and Flavia’s experiences in Nature Careers. We’re glad to see the concept of doing science outreach in one’s mother tongue growing in acceptance and popularity, as it is so important for the scientists themselves, and for the promotion of more inclusive, equitable and diverse communities.”

This article results from Native Scientist efforts in giving visibility to scientists showing an outstanding commitment to science outreach and in popularising the concept of science communication in the mother tongue among international students, scientists and organisations.

Over the years, we have asked scientists from a range of disciplines, career stages and nationalities, what it meant for them to participate in Native Scientist workshops, which connect international scientists with migrant pupils in their heritage language, and how such undertaking had impacted their lives. We summarised their impressions in this article.

We’ve also contacted Nature Careers and Science Careers, who invited us to submit an article. We invited our collaborators to write their stories on doing science outreach in their mother tongue. We received the story of Anna Napolitano, published here, and two others by Ana and Flávia, which were combined into a single article with the help of the editorial teams of Native Scientist and Nature. The final article can be read here.

Native Scientist manages the Native Scientist Blog, where scientists and science communicators can share their stories, thoughts and science on topics related to science education, science outreach, mobility and migration, equity and diversity, or others. Please read more about it here.

About Nature Careers: in July 2018, the Careers editors at Nature started regularly publishing columns in what eventually became known as the Careers Community on nature.com. These pieces are written by scientists, with editing help from the Nature team, and aim to share the author’s personal experience and what others might learn from it. These columns are one of the most-read article types on the Nature website, and are a way for working scientists to share their opinions and feelings about their lives in research. They’ve also been a place for scientists to be constructive by turning a personal failure or struggle into a valuable lesson for the wider community.

About Native Scientist: Native Scientist is an award-winning European-wide non-profit organisation that promotes cultural diversity in science, education and society. Native Scientist provides science and language workshops, science communication training, and bespoke projects for various institutions, including schools, universities and embassies. The work developed connects pupils with scientists to foster science and language literacy through role modelling and science and language integrated learning. Founded in 2013, their work reaches over 1,200 pupils a year and they count with a network of over 1,000 international scientists.