‘I don’t think we’ve scratched the surface on systemic exclusion’

When Lauren Esposito started their position as assistant curator of arachnology at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco in 2015, they were the first openly queer senior scientist at their workplace. Although they felt proud to be a trailblazer, it was lonely. When they reflected on their scientific career and noticed a theme of exclusion and isolation, they decided to do something to remedy this problem — by launching a visibility campaign called 500 Queer Scientists (500QS).

The community platform, which Esposito co-founded in 2018 with illustrator and evolutionary virologist Sean Vidal Edgerton, also at the California Academy of Sciences, has grown from 50 contributors at its outset to more than 1,900 global voices.

How Los Angeles neighbours partnered to show under-represented students the ‘unspoken rules’ to success

Now, in collaboration with Abigail Powell at the Eleanor Glanville Institute at the University of Lincoln, UK, they are working on a study called Barriers within Barriers — Minorities within Minorities, collecting data about what it means to be a queer person of colour in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. The work is funded by a grant from the UK Royal Society of Chemistry and the Science and Innovation Network. The study was inspired by research on queer inclusion that showed that LGBTQ+ people are more exposed to career limitations and harassment, and are often less valued than are non-queer people, because STEM culture amplifies heteronormative thinking that excludes queer professionals¹.

However, Esposito says that conversations on this topic stop short of adequately addressing issues of intersectional marginalization and the systemic barriers faced by queer scientists of colour. To remedy this, the current study was set up to interview queer scientists of colour to uncover the specific exclusions they face.

What is the great passion that has driven you as a scientist?

At university, I was set to pursue a medical degree, but then I took an entomology course. Something just clicked in my brain, and it took me back to my childhood.

My mom would save egg cartons to house insects in my bedroom; we often went camping and visited my grandparents, who lived in Elbow Cay in the Bahamas, where I would run wild. Those experiences shaped me fundamentally. These days, I’m studying the evolution of aquatic spiders, analysing micro-computed-tomography scans of amber fossils. I’m branching out to other species, although scorpions are my arachnid of choice.

Everybody finds their own path; it’s about trusting yourself. It is harder when everyone else is telling you that you shouldn’t be there, though. I think tackling that mindset drew me towards building a community.

When did you realize you wanted to tackle issues of anti-LGBTQ+ bias in science?

When I got my position running a research laboratory at the California Academy of Sciences. It’s in San Francisco, where there is a long history of queer activism and pushing the boundaries of acceptance in US culture. Yet there had never been an openly queer senior scientist at the institution. To be in this prominent institution and diverse city but be the first queer curator — it was something that I both celebrated and lamented.

‘I get paid for my outputs, not because I am Māori’: why Indigenous researchers often face double duty

I reflected on my journey of having had queer friends during undergraduate study, but never an openly queer instructor, lab mate or even person in my field, and that made me feel lonely. I realized that there must be other researchers like me who would benefit from building a community — and that inspired 500QS. I wanted to see the success of 500 Women Scientists happen for my own community. I was in a place of privilege, able to tell my story and share the stories of other academics, from all fields and career stages.

I see the importance of community and safe spaces. It’s so easy to think it’s a personal attribute of yours that has led to your being excluded, and when you realize it’s something more systemic, there’s power in that. You can forgive yourself, because it’s actually about systems that were set up in a way that doesn’t accommodate you.

Why did you choose to look at these issues through an intersectional lens?

Because I view the world through an intersectional lens, as a queer and Hispanic genderqueer woman. There’s not a lot of good information about intersectional barriers and how they can be multiplicative rather than additive, which is my experience and that of others. There’s certainly no research about that for queer folk of colour in STEM.

Defying the stereotype of Black resilience

When I learnt that, I was inspired to collaborate with the California Academy of Sciences on an exhibit called New Science, funded by a gender-equity grant provided through a collaboration between the IF/THEN Initiative and the US Association of Science and Technology Centers. This was my pandemic project, rather than baking bread.

There was a call for exhibits focused on women in science, but I noticed that the language was gender inclusive, so exhibits could go beyond featuring cisgender women. With the help of an advisory board, I was able to tell the stories of 23 queer scientists with intersectional identities, many of them scientists of colour. In a museum that had nearly one million visitors in 2022 and reached broader audiences online, we shared stories celebrating the ways people’s intersectionality has shaped their scientific research. The story of Mary Jo Ondrechen, a chemist at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, particularly stuck with me and showed me that I have so much to learn from the experiences of queer elders. She was born in the 1950s and has lived through the switch from homosexual criminalization to legal protections; and her research on computational drug discovery for COVID-19 shows how important it is to have diverse leaders in science.

Putting together that exhibit was my first contemplation of intersectionality, and how it differs from having just one axis of disadvantaged identity. It made me consider how experiencing it makes you picture the world differently, how you have been affected by it and excluded.

What is one thing you would change about how science is done when it comes to queer inclusion?

Assumptions that exclude people are constantly made in professional STEM culture and a bias exists towards cisgender and heterosexual identities that often makes queer people feel unwelcome². That can manifest in subtle ways, such as queer people not keeping family photos on their desks because it opens them up to a questioning of their professionalism and belonging.

If you consider the social constructs of science culture, they were established by white, heterosexual, cisgender, affluent men. If you don’t fall into that demographic, your presence becomes political — but it’s only political because you’re asking to be included.