Mountain Sentinels wants to hear from our members, partners, and audience. We invite you to submit a brief pitch about living, working, or researching in the mountains which could be featured in the Mountain Sentinels blog and linked in our newsletter.

This is an opportunity to have a published work disseminated to our international audience of Mountain scholars, stakeholders, and community members while retaining full ownership of the writing. The piece will be edited collaboratively between you and our communications team to ensure clear, expressive, and interesting work for all audiences. Modest compensation will be considered depending on the type and length of the piece, and pending final approval and publication on the Mountain Sentinels blog.

Examples of topics:

  • First-person accounts authored or co-authored by members of mountain communities: Reflections on work or life in the mountains such as: agriculture, farming, ranching, water, governance, conservation, observed changes over time
  • Innovative research on mountain themes such as: sustainability, climate change, climate adaptation;
    Inter- or transdisciplinary projects, collaborations, or cooperative efforts;
  • Outreach or community building activities, especially targeted to the younger generation.

If you would like to share a previously published blog post or original research published in a journal, please reach out to us. We will work with you to find the most appropriate way to disseminate your work.

Open blog pitch submission form.

General Guidelines

We ask that pieces pertain to your mountain local community, or one that you have experience in. The Mountain Sentinels blog strives to be accessible to the widest audience possible, and published pieces should reflect this goal. Conversational writing styles are encouraged. Researchers are advised to review common effective science communication principles and decolonial approaches to science communication when submitting their work.

If you are at all fluent in a second language or dialect, we would love to have a translated version of the work similar to this blog post. This makes the piece more accessible to our international community. If you speak a specific dialect of a language we encourage you to use this in the piece as a way to engage your culture and develop an everlasting work in our digital space. Even if the dialect is not widely spoken, it deserves a space to thrive.

Decolonizing Science Communication

English is often called the language of scientists. However, the opposite is true. Key elements to indigenous science have included storytelling (oral and written), art, architecture, sport, and other subjects that have existed much longer than the English language has colonized the field of science.

The idea of decolonizing science communication acknowledges that colonialist structures such as racism, imperialism, and economic globalization continue to shape science and scientific education.1 This bias leads to diminished language access, underrepresentation of marginalized communities in scientific discourse, and targeted language that tends to place the problems of climate change and environmental issues on the communities (1) most impacted and (2) least responsible.

For instance, targeted language in English can look like using words like “anthropocene” where the burden is focused on humanity as a whole instead of settler colonialism. Words such as “capitalocene” or “plantationocene” instead engage with the same content without placing the blame on those with little to no fault in the human-driven conditions that are linked to climate change. Targeted language can even implicate “More Than Human” (MTH) stakeholders such as flora, fauna, or ecosystems at large for generating their own “self-destructive problems.” 2

Mountain Sentinels aims to promote a broader perspective by seeking articles from indigenous authors and tackle access problems by asking that articles use inclusive, non-targeted language. For our blog posts, we invite authors to incorporate a second language, regardless of dialect, to help slim the gaps in access to research.

References

  1. Boisselle, L. N. (2016). Decolonizing Science and Science Education in a Postcolonial Space (Trinidad, a Developing Caribbean Nation, Illustrates). Sage Open, 6(1), 2158244016635257. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244016635257.
  2. Davis, J. et al. (2019) ‘Anthropocene, Capitalocene, … Plantationocene?: A Manifesto for Ecological Justice in an Age of Global Crises’, Geography Compass, 13(5), p. e12438. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12438.