AAS Publishing Introduces #BlackSpaceWeek2023 Video Series

Black in Astro has partnered with AAS Publishing for BlackSpaceWeek to feature astronomical papers from six Black scholars in the field through the AAS Journal Authors YouTube Series. These video chats will be released during #BlackSpaceWeek2023 (18-24 June) at 9:00 am ET each day; you can visit the AAS Journal Youtube page for the videos each day, or follow the hyperlinks below to view their published papers:

• Kiersten Boley: 18 June
• Don Dixon: 19 June
• Keith Hawkins: 20 June
• Brittany Miles: 21 June
• Quadry Chance: 22 June
• Sinclaire Manning: 23 June

Black in Astro is a grassroots organization born in the wake of social unrest in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd. With COVID isolation guaranteeing a captive audience, people in the US and beyond paused to listen to the needs of Black communities on all scales. We at Black in Astro, unlike many, believe that our work didn’t end in 2020. That year we had our inaugural Black Space Week, then called Black in Astro Week, which was a week chock-full of programming centering Black folks in space-related fields, panels, networking opportunities, and more. Since then, we’ve had such a week every year, fittingly the week of Juneteenth, and each one has only grown larger in scale and impact.

This year, we wanted to focus on citing the work of Black scholars in space-related fields. All too often, marginalized people are pigeonholed into equity and diversity work since we’re the most directly impacted by hostile spaces, but the onus should not be on the harmed to repair the harm. Instead, we want to spotlight Black astronomers for their science, the very thing equity work seeks to make it easier to do. For this reason, Black In Astro is proud to partner with the AAS Journal Authors video series in order to highlight the work of several incredible Black astronomers, and we all get the pleasure of hearing about their work from their very own mouths.