Indigenous Science and Ethical Substance (ISES) Lab
About ISES
The Indigenous Science and Ethical Substance lab(ISES) is an Indigenous-led lab in the Technoscience Research Unit (TRU), a hub for Indigenous and justice-based science and technology studies research at the University of Toronto. The ISES lab is committed to values-based science grounded in Indigenous and environmental justice values. This includes proceeding with care and reciprocity, accounting for intergenerational impacts, and drawing on relational frames to understand healing and environmental sustainability.
The ISES lab is led by Dr. M. Murphy (Red River Métis) and Dr. Kristen Bos (Red River Métis) and is focused on:
Creating visions and protocols that ground scientific work in Indigenous and environmental justice values and research practices
Developing visions of ethical substance, including questions of research process, tools, ethical governance, data practices, and material substances
Creating new forms of Indigenous chemical risk assessment grounded in community-research and Indigenous values
Co-creating research ethics and practices relevant to SDLs and automated substance discovery informed by Indigenous research
The ISES lab includes a partnership with the Acceleration Consortium where we collaborate on introducing values-based research design into materials discovery.
We seek to build new relationships between Indigenous researchers, environmental justice values, and the scientific and technical fields that make up SDLs for substance discovery research. Some of the ISES-AC research collaborations include: supporting values-based decision-making models for SDLs; suggesting ethical guidelines for partnership development, and; deepening the understanding of ethical and social implications of accelerated materials discovery, including through partnerships with SDLs. We use community-based, land-based, and art-based research methods that foreground intergenerational knowledge of water, land, and non-humans.
Our work asks:
How do we define “ethical substance” and support justice-oriented materials discovery?
How do we promote accessible and open-source materials discovery while averting the potential for weaponization?
Offering cutting-edge training and upskilling programs
A Hub
The ISES lab also serves as a hub for strengthening the field of Indigenous Science, Technology, and Environmental Studies (ISTES) at the University of Toronto and beyond. ISTES is committed to Indigenous Data Sovereignty (IDS), which is enshrined in the First Nations principles of OCAP® (First Nations Information Governance Centre) and the international CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance. IDS asserts the ownership and control of Indigenous data by Indigenous communities, including in AI and automated research methods.
Meet the team
Murphy
Kristen Bos
Reena Shadaan
