Dear All,

A small thought, if I may.

The survey page does not permit me to re-enter it, but from what I recall the first two entries were (a) anyone at all with an interest in sponges and (b) people who have published on sponges.

I want to propose that another category be added.

In any field of marine-life research, there are very many hands-on practitioners who have accumulate large amounts of knowledge that come to be diffused through their respective co-practitioners (and who are also often a source of "native" information for academic researchers).

Such people often have a dislike for the rarefied world of Academia. Indeed they may dislike the PhD researchers who come to harvest their knowledge,  Many of them have never written anything formal in their lives - and additionally they may also be illiterate. So they would certainly not rank among those who have published on sponges.

However, such people are a treasured resource of understandings, practical hands-on experience, and theories and observations that they test at first-hand.

With that in mind, I would like to suggest that Christine adds an additional category that could include those people.

I suppose that "people who are active on and around sponges", or something similar, might do the job.

I would also add that, in these times of "decolonisation of academic discourse" we should be wary of excluding the non-academic Other from the right of citizenship in the world of episteme.

That's my two penn'orth, for what it's worth.

As regards voting, a simple yes-no vote on such a proposal could decide the matter.

[By the way, as regards the book of proceedings of our SOAS Spnges Conference - for those of you who are wondering - for the last 6 weeks the printer has been sending the proofing copies to an entirely mistaken address... Printing will be completed in another couple of weeks, all being well....]

Ed