About

Background and structure of the R Foundation taskforce on women and other under-represented groups

Background

The task force was set up by the R Foundation in December 2015 to address the underrepresentation of women and rebranded in January 2017 to accommodate more under-represented groups such as LGBT, minority ethnic groups, and people with disabilities in the R community.

The members of the task force were invited to participate based on their interest in routing for specific under-represented groups and their contributions in the area of diversity and inclusion, to reflect different genders, ethnic groups, work contexts, career stages and aspects of the R project (e.g. CRAN and Bioconductor). The task force focuses on particular tasks as outlined below:

  • Accessibility: Working to improve access to R materials for people with low vision, blindness, hard of hearing, deaf, and other disabilities.

  • Community: General outreach to help people from under-represented groups get into R and develop as useRs.

  • Conferences: Focusing on R Foundation conferences, liaising with organizers/program committee on policies and inclusion initiatives.

  • On-ramps: Creating paths for useRs to develop their skills and make contributions to the R/BioConductor package ecosystem.

  • Social Media: Posting to Twitter and/or Facebook, soliciting blog posts and publishing them, maintaining website.

  • Surveys: Running and analysing community surveys, packaging up data and tools and maintaining the Data page.

  • Teaching: Methodology, materials and workshops designed for under-represented groups.

The activities of the taskforce are recorded in the minutes of our bimonthly core team teleconferences and alternate monthly all team slackathons. We are open to new members joining one of our sub-teams. If interested, please contact rowforwards@gmail.com.

The task force is happy to engage with other individuals and organisations (such as R-Ladies) that are concerned about diversity and inclusion and actively seek outside collaboration on specific tasks.

Team Members

Heather Turner - (LinkedIn/Mastodon/ GitHub)

gwynn gebeyehu - (Mastodon)/GitHub)

Jonathan Godfrey - (Massey University, NZ). (Twitter/GitHub)

Kevin O’Brien - (LinkedIn/Twitter/GitHub)

Ella Kaye - (LinkedIn/Mastodon/GitHub)

Noa Tamir - (LinkedIn/Twitter/GitHub)

Saranjeet Kaur Bhogal - (LinkedIn/Twitter/GitHub)

Emma Rand - (LinkedIn/Twitter/GitHub)

Zane Dax - (Twitter/GitHub)

Liz Hare - (LinkedIn/Mastodon/GitHub)

Julie Josse - (LinkedIn/Twitter/GitHub)

Michael Chirico - (Twitter/GitHub)

Daniela Cialfi - (LinkedIn

Michael Lawrence - (LinkedIn/Twitter/GitHub)

Paola Corrales - (Twitter/GitHub)

Di Cook - (LinkedIn/Twitter/GitHub)

Isabella Gollini - (LinkedIn/Twitter/GitHub)

Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel - (LinkedIn/Twitter/GitHub)

Maria Prokofieva - (LinkedIn/Twitter/GitHub)

Joyce Robbins - (LinkedIn/Twitter/GitHub)

Previous Members

Claudia Huaylla
Andrea Sánchez-Tapia
Samantha Toet
Yanina Bellini Saibene
Jyoti Bhogal
Ritwik Mitra
Emily Dodwell
Allison Vuong
Becca Wilson
Anna Vasylytsya
Nujcharee Haswell
Pavitra Chakravarty
Maya Gans
Miljenka Vuko
Imke Mayer
Florencia Mangini
Joslynn Lee
Damiano Cerasuolo
Tania Allard
Tatjana Kecojevic
Richard Ngamita

Lorna Maria Aine

Stella Bollman
Jenny Bryan
Nic Crane
Rudolf Debelak
John Fox
Jasmine Dumas
Andrea Foulkes
Gina Griffin
Madlene Hamilton
Zhian N. Kamvar
Liz Kellogg
Os Keyes
Angela Li
Gina Merchant
David Meza
Ileena Mitra
Jesse Mostipak
Shakirah Nakalungi
Wenfeng Qin
Augustina Ragwitz
Maëlle Salmon
Dorris Scott
Tracy Shen
David Smith
Carolin Strobl
Charlotte Wickham
Hadley Wickham
Yizhe Xu