This lab book draws upon the collectively-honed insights and pathbreaking work of the Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR), a feminist, anti-colonial lab specializing in monitoring plastic pollution, directed by Max Liboiron. See the Jan 1, 2018 snapshot of CLEAR Lab Book. In particular, lab guidlines 1-8 were drawn directly from the CLEAR Lab Book and then adapted with minor edits. The value framework blurb as well as the onboarding and exiting protocols are directly drawn from the CLEAR Lab Book. Text on faculty responsiblities is almost entierly from the Aly Lab Book and that lab book also inspired some language in the Work Autonomiously guideline. The child care guideline is entirely in debt to Kate Cairns syllabus policy you can see here.
We communicate our values in the hopes that they will ground our actions and decisions in what we hold important. It is our aspiration that all actions and outputs of the lab are reflective of these values. Due to the complex committments of life within variously violent systems we may not always realize these aspirations but we will also not use this as an excuse to let ourselves off the hook for these values.
| Values |
|---|
| Accountability |
| Community-centered |
| Abolition |
| Humility & Solidarity |
| Critical social, racial, and environmental justice |
General term + what it means to us. A glossary of terms we use including our values is located here (this is semi-out of date).
- If you are sick, heartbroken, or exhausted, go home. This work is not more important than your well being. This guideline supersedes the following guidelines on attendence and is complementry to many of those that follow. Communicating when you have to bow out is preferred but we recognize that is not always possible.
For a list of UCLA Campus Resources for Student Support please see this list.
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Attend lab and working group meetings. Lab meetings (1hr/week) and working group meetings (1 hr/week) are the main ways that we operate as an entire lab, and as a community. Lab meetings are where we discuss the values, concepts, goals, and ideas that underlie all our work as a lab, and therefore are where we work out how and why we work. Without the meetings, we are just some people working on some stuff. If you are not going to make a lab meeting, note it in the #general channel on slack. You don't need to explain why you won't be in attendance. Working group meetings occur without Nick (although he can be invited in or ask permission to join) and they are a time to work together in a non-agenda-driven space without faculty presence. Working group meetings at the start of the quarter may tend to be slightly agenda-driven as its time to self-organize. If you are not going to be able to make a working group meeting note it in the channel for the project you're working on, so your collaborators know what to expect. You don't need to explain why you won't be in attendance, but please don't get in the habit of not attenting meetings. If you do, someone from the lab will reach out to you to make sure you're ok.
Here are some ways to structure working group meetings:- Quick check in.
- If starting a new project go through the the boring logistics of the workflow so no one gets lost in the protocol.
- Updates on current project.
- Where everyone is at and what questions are keeping you from moving forward (even if folks haven't started yet they can learn from other people's questions).
- If nearing the end of a project set a clear deadline to finish or to at the very least provide an update on where you left off.
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Work autonomously, with others. We trust and depend on you to get your projects done, and there won’t be a lot of oversight to ensure that is happening. Nick cares for the lab as a whole, while lab members care for projects, each other, and themselves. Our work is collaborative not competitive. Respect each other's strengths and weaknesses. We will all inevitably struggle with some aspect of our work. When you need help, reach out to other lab members. We expect that you are able to ask for help when you need it, and to problem solve. We are all here to help. You are always welcome to check in with Nick and the research coordinator, but you were invited to join the lab because you’re smart and can figure things out, so try that first. Mistakes will be made. That’s cool. We admit our mistakes and we communicate them to others so that mistakes aren't repeated and then we move on.
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Take care of each other, and yourself. When you first start, work in pairs so other lab members are there to answer questions or lend a hand. If you notice other lab members are struggling, provide whatever support you can, or tell someone that you think can help them. Listen to each other or resepct each others desire for quiet when we need it. Lab members are always encouraged to speak their mind and communicate their concerns/questions. You can always bring the research coordinator or Nick in to provide concrete support if you or another lab member requires it.
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Take breaks! If you work for three hours or more, take a paid 15-minute break every 1.5-2 hours that counts towards your paid or course work time. If you work for six hours, take a paid 30 minute break in addition to the 15 minutes. If you work for 8 hours, take a 1-hour "on-the-clock" lunch break. Don’t work more than 8 hours. That’s silly. If you’re doing intensive coding, microscope, video, or counting work, rest your eyes every 20-30 minutes. Studies have shown that taking regular breaks makes you more productive. It’s also important to care for yourself.
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Take your ideas seriously. Many of the lab tasks are for ongoing projects in which we are beholden to community groups, grantors, or others. But we are always interested in new projects or new ways of doing ongoing projects. We’re especially interested in ideas for how to make our work more feminist, decolonial, and equitable. If you have an idea for something you want to explore or develop, let us know! Post your idea in #kindling channel (and let people know in #general that you've posted it). {Kindling protocol, under development}
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Honor each other's time. Because the lab is member-run, if you are meeting others, it is important that you are on time so that others are not waiting for you. If you’re running late, text ahead and let people know when you expect to arrive. You can also use slack but people's notifications may not be setup to get the message in a timely way, so its best to get the numbers of folks you're meeting up with before you’re late. We understand that things comes up and clear communication is the way we stay our course when one of us is running late or has to reconsider the extent of their commitments to our collective work. Honoring eachother's time is not just about showing up when we say we will but also routinely appreciating the labor and time of other members. This is everyday work, but especially significant moments or efforts can additionally be recognized in the #appreciation channel.
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Acknowledge the shoulders & Land you stand on. When you make presentations from the work that has happened in the lab, always include an acknowledgement page as your last slide that thanks people who contributed in various ways by name, as well as the lab itself. For papers, do the same with author orders and citation. All presentations should include an Indigenous Land Acknowledgement at the beggining and all papers should include such an acknowledgement in the acknowledgements section. This is because environmental science owes a great debt to those who have, and continue to, care for the Land of Turtle Island. Repeating these truths is a small part of the work of counteracting Indigenous erasure and a way of practicing equity, humility and solidarity.
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Don't get lost in enumeration. When we conduct quantitative assessments of envrionmental violence we will not lose track of “how”, “why”, and "what can we do about it" as we attempt to distill “how much.” The means that we have an attentiveness to the quality of our own proccess and the values they refelct. But this also means that our enumerative work must be complemented by qualitative historical understandings of the processes that led to the violences we are recording as well as look towards how an otherwise future might be achieved.
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Child Care. Many students have care responsiblities for a child or children in their life, whether as a parent, an older sibling, cousin, etc. If your childcare needs ever come into conflict with the lab schedule, please don't feel as though you need to miss a lab meeting. We understand that sometimes plans fall though. If this happens, you are welcome to bring a child to lab meetings or lab work with you. We simply ask that you bring materials to keep them busy, and remain mindful of your classmates. If you have any questions about this, feel free to contact Nick about it.
Faculty Members
In addition to all of the above faculty members should:
- Support other members of the lab (scientifically, intellectually, emotionally, and where possible, financially).
- Give other members feedback on a timely basis, including feedback on project ideas, conference posters, talks, manuscripts, figures, grants.
- Be available in person and via e-mail on a regular basis, including regular meetings to discuss your research.
- Support your career development in whatever way I can (e.g., by introducing you to other researchers in the field, promoting your work at talks, writing recommendation letters for you, and letting you attend conferences as often as finances permit)
- Help you prepare for the next step of your career in the ways that their work and experince can be helpful.
The Carceral Ecologies Lab acknowledges the Gabrielino/Tongva peoples as the traditional land caretakers of Tovaangar (the Los Angeles basin and South Channel Islands). As a land grant institution, we pay our respects to the Honuukvetam (Ancestors), ‘Ahiihirom (Elders) and ‘eyoohiinkem (our relatives/relations) past, present and emerging.
Click on the linked words above to hear the pronunciation for the Tongva-language words and see the map of Tongva territory below.
Image Via native-land.ca/
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For more information on the Indigenous repatriation via NAGPRA and UCLA's role see Carrying Our Ancestors Home "an educational tool for people seeking to understand the process and diversity of returning ancestral remains and cultural items as well as the impact of repatriation on Indigenous communities around the world."
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For more information on Indigenous LA, the city in what is now known as the US with the largest Indigenous population, See Mapping Indigenous LA.
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To better understand the 13,399,104 (inflation-adjusted) dollars that the University of California gained though the land grants of the Morrill Act that disposessed Indigenous people though violence-backed land cessions, see Land Grab Universities.
Guidelines are general rules and principles, whereas protocols are precise and detailed plans that maintain practices across our group and within science, social science, and organizing—it defines the way we ought to proceed in different situations.
Welcome to the lab!
First thing that will happen as a part of our onboarding proccess is that you will be invited to our slack. Once in slack:
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New to Slack? Here's a tutorial.
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Now that you understand the platform a bit more, go to the #onboarding channel and get access to our 1) cloud storage 2) shared calendar with all our meetings (including time, place, links) 3) our GitHub. No need to join this channel. Its just a place to find the resrouces.
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On the left side of your slack browser click on the "+" to the right of "channels" and select "browse channels". take a look at the different channels and join the ones that you are interested in (or have been asked to work on).
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Read this Lab Book!
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Understand lab expectations—manage your own time, solve problems to the best of your ability, use the entire lab as a resource.
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Start a schedule of tasks—what are you going to work on, when? As the research coordinator to help you with that on github (if you need help).
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Safety stuff.
- Communal round robin during a meeting: what we valued about your work with us.
- Return lab key!!!!!!
- Exit interview.
Exit interview:
- How was your overall experience working in the lab?
- How did your fellow lab members make you feel / how did you feel in the lab environment (approachable? Comfortable to talk to to? Easy to work with?...)
- What is the most valuable thing you learned? What else did you learn?
- How do you think your work/experience in the lab could have been different?
- What stood in the way of you getting your work done (if anything)?
- What would you like to learn that you didn’t get to?
- Would you like to come back to work in the lab? If so, what would you choose to work on?
- Is there anything else about your experiences that you would like to share?
Under Construction...
To ensure our work remains accessible we rely on the following licenses (unless otherwise stated):
- For datasets and databases we use the ODC Open Database License
- For text and images (and similar creative work) we use Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)
- For code we use the GNU General Public License v 3
To see how we for determine the correct EPA ID number(s) for carceral facilities please see our Manual Coding Protocol here (24 Pages).
Community Care Volume 1. Funk Apple Music + Spotify By Melissa Chimwaza
Community Care Volume 2. Reggae Apple Music By Melissa Chimwaza
Community Care Volume 3. Denouement for Change Spotify by Nathan Tran
Community Care Volume 4. Earf Spotify by Nathan Tran
Feel The City Breathin Spotify by Ben Millam
Undergraduate Research Fellows Program (Due October 15 – November 15)link
Libary Undergrad research awards (Due April 1st) link humanities, social science, and arts here
Summer Programs for Undergraduate Research (various due dates, early spring) link
Undergrad Research Week (Spring) Link + Dean's prize (Spring Link