Sara Lil Middleton
How does our environment shape how we show up as individuals and connect with our communities? This question is at the root of Sara Middleton’s approach to research and teaching.
She has an interdisciplinary background in environmental sciences, science communication, community outreach and education. In her work as an Open Science educator at LMU, Munich, she strives to embed equity, social justice and Universal Design principles into the Open Science training materials she develops.
In her most recent work at FORRT, she led the development of the Academic Wheel of Privilege framework and has supported the development of the Citational Justice Toolkit.
BlueSky: @saralilplants.bsky.social
Session
Decades of empirical research across disciplines reveal the pervasiveness of citation biases along axes of gender, race, geography, and epistemology. Who we cite reflects and reinforces both the boundaries and hierarchies of academic knowledge, shaping not only whose research is legitimized and valued but also whose careers are advanced. Citations, the currency of the academy with power to reinforce or dismantle hierarchies that privilege dominant knowledge systems cannot thus be a neutral, apolitical act. This workshop unpacks the concept of citation politics and its role in sustaining epistemic hierarchies within scholarly communities. We introduce a comprehensive and openly accessible Citational Justice Toolkit, developed by the FORRT community, which curates actionable resources, tools, and practices helping scholars and institutions to audit, diversify, and reflect on their citation practices across the research cycle. Our aim is to support a shift from tokenistic inclusion toward epistemically accountable, socially responsible, and structurally aware scholarship.