Community Showcase
The Community Showcase is an initiative inspired by the Black Agenda from the Black Microbiologists Association. The Community Showcase is a document that promotes the work and mentorship of scientists from historically marginalized groups (HMGs) within the Phage’s community. This includes, but is not limited to attendees that are Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian/Pacific Islander/Desi, first-generation students, queer, disabled, neurodivergent, and/or women.
The goals of this document is two-fold – 1) it is intended to help the broader Phages community easily find, support, and promote the stellar work of scientists from our various marginalized communities; 2) it is intended to help attendees find other scientists from their own communities to off-set the isolation that many marginalized people feel within academia. In 2023, the Showcase promoted >70 people that ranged from undergraduate to faculty members. The Community Showcase has several sections that are described below. Register for the Community Showcase here.
Presenters
Each participant receives their own entry in the Showcase. Each entry includes personal information (e.g. name, pronouns), professional information (e.g. job, university, lab), presentation information (e.g. presentation title, location, time), a space for them to talk about themselves and their passions, and the marginalized communities that they belonged to. Participants were also given the opportunity to include a picture and links to any of their social media.
Mentors
As marginalized people, we often don’t have mentors that share our identities and can teach us how to navigate academic spaces, or visible role models that occupy the positions that we are working towards. In the Showcase, we have a section dedicated to highlighting mentors within the Phages community that belong to HMGs to help trainees to see and connect with mentors that were like them and in these types of positions.
Professional Communities
The Community Showcase has a section dedicated to highlighting the different professional societies that cater to scientists from different HMGs. In 2023, we had pages for the Black Microbiologists Association, STEMNoire, Leading Edge, and the International Society for Nonbinary Scientists.
Community Mixer
As marginalized people, conferences can sometimes feel incredibly isolating because you are suddenly in a new space and might not know how to find others within your community. In order to help combat this isolation, we are hosting a mixer for attendees from HMGs during the first late-night social hour of the conference. This includes, but it not limited to attendees that are Black, Latinx, Asian/Pacific Islander/Desi, first-generation students, queer, disabled, neurodivergent, and/or women. This initiative is dedicated to providing conference members from HMGs a safe and welcoming space to network and socialize with other scientists from their community. In 2023, we had >110 people attend the mixer and are excited for the second annual mixer this year. To register for this year’s mixer, please fill out the form at 2025 Phages Mixer Registration.
