Category: Uncategorized
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Harry Collins on gravitational waves
About 10 days ago a team of scientists at the South Pole made, it seems, a new discovery related to the Big Bang, inflation and gravitational waves. I quickly penned a blog post about this in which I looked at how this discovery was framed through the use of various metaphors. While writing the post,…
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3D printing: When science and technology take us by surprise
3D printing (or ‘additive’ or ‘digital manufacturing’) has been around for a while (and we’ll see for how long further on in this post); even 4D printing has been around for a while. However, 3D printing only really came into focus for me quite recently, when I came across the metaphors ‘3D printer of life’…
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CALL FOR PAPERS, EASST 2014 – Solidarity and plurality: dimensions of ‘the public’ in scientific engagement
We warmly invite papers to our Making Science Public panel Solidarity and plurality: dimensions of ‘the public’ in scientific engagement, being held at the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) conference in Toruń, the birthplace of Copernicus, on September 17-19. The panel is co-chaired by Stevienna De Saille and Warren Pearce (Making Science Public Research Fellows). The full call for papers is…
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Making Responsible Innovation Matter: From Research Projects to Public Policies
Writing in this blog, my colleague, Brigitte Nerlich, suggests that the agenda of responsible innovation is becoming an unstoppable juggernaut in the world of research policy and funding. She asks that we take pause to scrutinize and reflect more on this agenda. So, just what is responsible innovation? Is it the latest tick-boxing exercise that…
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Working across science cultures: A student’s experience
This guest post is the outcome of a twitter conversation between Brigitte and Stephanie Ashenden. It’s great to have a student guest-post on this blog! Attending my first ever lecture back in my first year of university was without a doubt, one of the biggest eye openers to the competitive nature of the job market.…
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Evidence and Public Engagement in Immigration Control
Immigration control has become a fundamental project in contemporary Britain especially in relation to the incapacity of the welfare state to absorb large numbers of poor immigrants coming from all over the globe. However, as Bridget Anderson has argued in her book ‘Us and Them: the Dangerous Politics of Immigration Controls’, immigration control, as a…
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How to do things with GIFs: Some musings on online science communication
Some weeks ago my son said to me: “Mum, you should write a blog post about GIFs”. As I am a bit of a techno-culture-laggard, I asked him what these things were. He showed me a few and they made me laugh. They also made me think. Images, GIFs, infographics, short videos and so on…
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What on earth do you mean? An outsider’s view on Public Understanding of Science
This is a guest post by Hilary Sutcliffe provoked by a twitter exchange: Yesterday Patrick Sturgis tweeted a link to an article he has just published in the journal Public Understanding of Science. Hilary asked for a copy, as the articles are behind a paywall; I sent her the article and asked at the same…
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Food sovereignty in the UK
Food security has become the dominant framing of agri-food policy and research in the UK. However, it is not the only framing. In this post we take a look at one of the alternatives, food sovereignty. We look for food sovereignty in policy, in research, and in the media. We also explore the emerging food…
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Making science public: The science and silence conundrum
The issue of science and advocacy is a complex topic and has led to heated discussions amongst scientists, science communicators and commentators of different persuasions, especially this year it seems. There was first a flurry of debate provoked, in July this year, by an article written by Tamsin Edwards who argued that climate scientists should…
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