Report: IAU Offices Meeting 2021

IAU Offices Family Meeting 2021

The IAU Offices Family Meeting was held online from 20 – 22 July, 2021, bringing together the global networks of the 4 IAU Offices. The meeting report contains a summary of the 30+ sessions on astronomy education, teaching, outreach, equity, and more.

The IAU co-hosts four offices around the world – the Office for Astronomy Outreach (OAO) in Japan, the Office for Young Astronomers (OYA) virtually, the Office of Astronomy for Development (OAD) in South Africa, and the Office of Astronomy for Education (OAE) in Germany. Each office has its own mandate (outreach, training, development, education) but there is inevitable overlap among these domains.

The IAU Offices Family Meeting was planned as a forum to discuss topics of interest for all IAU offices and benefit from synergies. The meeting was open to the networks of all the offices, including the National Astronomy Education Coordinators (NAEC), National Outreach Coordinators (NOC), Regional Office of Astronomy for Development (ROAD) and Language Expertise Centres of the OAD (LOAD). It was organized by the IAU Office of Astronomy for Education with support from the other offices.

Participants were invited to propose discussion topics in advance, resulting in a participant-driven meeting with dynamic and lively sessions. More than 30 sessions were organized over the 3 days with plenty of debate and discussion. Topics included:

  • Archival data for education
  • Remote teaching and outreach
  • Decolonising Astronomy Outreach and Education
  • Monitoring and evaluation
  • Astronomy education in low-income communities
  • Astrotourism
  • Astronomy and careers

and more.