13:00-14:00

The seminar will introduce the “empowering indigenous peoples and knowledge systems related to climate change and intellectual property rights” project, which assumes and challenges practices of open and collaborative science as a process. During the seminar, reflections from the first year of the project will be shared, these will include the challenges of conducting open science within our own institutions including navigating institutional power relations and ethical processes, and also notions of openness in the context of indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) and protection of IKS and knowledge holder’s rights will be scrutinized.

Dr. Cath Traynor manages the Climate Change Programme, within Natural Justice, a small and dynamic NGO with headquarters in Cape Town South Africa. Natural Justice - Lawyers for Communities and the Environment - work at the intersection of human rights and environmental law. The NGO’s vision is the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity through the self-determination of Indigenous Peoples and communities.

Dr. Laura Foster is an Assistant Professor of Gender Studies at Indiana University Bloomington (IUB) in the United States. She is also an Affiliate Faculty member of the African Studies Department and Maurer School of Law at IUB. Her research broadly focuses on the co-constituted relationships of law and science, and how such interactions historically structure and reinforce certain bodies, identities, knowledges, and practices over others.