Abby Kinchy

Dr. Abby Kinchy is Professor and Department Head of Science Technology Studies at RPI. Her research and teaching focus on the politics of environmental pollution and the relationship between science and democratic engagement. Recently, her research has focused on “citizen science”–public participation in environmental monitoring. Her goal is to bring concepts of power and social justice into sharper focus in popular and professional discussions of citizen science. Her book on this topic, co-authored with Aya H. Kimura, is Science by the People: Participation, Power, and the Politics of Environmental Knowledge (Rutgers, 2019). Her NSF-funded project, Nuestros Suelos/Our Soil, explores how citizen science could help urban communities to identify heavy metal contamination in soil and to advocate for solutions.