Joycelyn Longdon: Forest Sound, Machine Learning, and Data Justice in Ghana

In this episode, we speak to Joycelyn Longdon, a PhD researcher on the AI for the study of Environmental Risk programme at the University of Cambridge, and founder of Climate in Colour, an educational platform focused on climate science and social justice.

Joycelyn discusses her interdisciplinary work creating machine learning algorithms and data visualisations of forest sound with a community living by the Bosomtwe Range Forest Reserve in Ghana. She reflects on the importance – and the complexities – of participatory, justice-oriented research to co-create technologies that facilitate community agency and data sovereignty in knowing and managing forests.

This episode also includes audio recordings from the acoustic sensors Joycelyn and the community have installed in the forest. Listen out!

Interviewers: Kate Lewis Hood and Michelle Westerlaken

Producer: Harry Murdoch

Image: Teye, a hunter from the community Joycelyn is working with, installs an acoustic sensor in the forest. Image source: Joycelyn Longdon. Reproduced with permission.