Third annual conference on Science and the Public
The Victoria Baths
Following two successful meetings at Imperial College London, the annual Science and the Public conference moved to Manchester in 2008. Newly expanded to two days, the meeting took place in the unusual surroundings of Manchester's historic Victoria Baths, well known as the winner of BBC2's Restoration series. Two of the venue's swimming pools -- officially derelict at present, but still able to lend Edwardian grandeur -- served as our presentation 'rooms', and the meeting included a tour of the site by volunteers from the restoration campaign.
Please direct any queries about the meeting to scienceandpublic@googlemail.com.
CHSTM gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the British Society for the History of Science, which provided financial support towards postgraduate registration costs; and in particular the help and support of the Friends of Victoria Baths.
Programme
This programme is also available as a pdf download.
SATURDAY 21 JUNE
09.30-09.45
Introduction and Welcome
09.45-11.15 Session One
1A: Communicating Technology
- "Communicating computers"
James Sumner, Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Manchester - "Martians, madness, and the masses: The idea of mass panic as a response to scientific and technological advance, 1938-2004"
Daniel Patrick Thurs, University of Portland - "Science blogging, singularities and the multitude of technoscience"
Thomas Söderqvist, Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen
Delegates in the bath...
1B: Biomedical Meanings
- "Delphi Forum: actors, policies and discourses of abortion in Spain"
María José Miranda Suarez, María González Aguado and Carmen Gallego Martos, Department of Science, Technology and Society, Institute of Philosophy, Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) - "The death of the man on the Clapham Omnibus, and the stillbirth of British bioethics: moral pluralism and the Warnock Committee on embryo experimentation"
Duncan Wilson, Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Manchester - "Of Aging Research: an exploration between history and public understanding of science"
Miguel Gomes and Maria Strecht Almeida, Instituto de Ciências Biomedicas Abel Salazar, Universidade do Porto
11.15-11.30 Break
11.30-13.00 Session Two
The tour of the complex's pools, boiler rooms and outbuildings provided plenty of insights into Edwardian ideas about public health
2A: Representations of Science
- "The Bash Street Kids do dinosaurs: cartoons and the communication of science"
Alice Bell, Science Communication Group, Imperial College - "Heroes of science: public image, inspiration and impacts"
Bobby Cerini, Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, Australian National University - "Explaining expectations: imagined nanotechnological futures as esoteric and exoteric discourses"
Mark Erickson, University of Brighton
2B: Patients and Lay Expertise, Panel 1
- "Representing patient experience: breast cancer and the NHS in Through the Night (1975)"
Elizabeth Toon, Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Manchester - "Public Access Defibrillator: medical technology in the hands of laymen"
Constantin Canavas, Faculty Life Sciences, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences - "Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients as experts: Using nominal groups to develop a patient-generated core set of treatment outcomes"
Tessa C Sanderson, University of the West of England; Pam Richards, University of Bristol; Sarah Hewlett, University of the West of England - Moderator: Neil Pemberton, Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Manchester
13.00-14.00 Lunch
14.00-15.00 Guided tour of the Victoria Baths
15.00-17.00 Session Three
John Pickstone's plenary
3A: Science Museums
- "The intertextual science museum"
Tim Boon, Science Museum - "From the laboratory to the public space: Swiss ethnographic museums, 1920-1945"
Serge Reubi, Institut d'histoire, Université de Neuchâtel - "Exhibiting great historical figures in science: the case of Charles Darwin as a geologist"
Francis Neary, Sedgwick Museum, University of Cambridge - "Mind the gap! Interpreting contemporary and historic technology at the Science Museum"
Ben Russell, Curator of Mechanical Engineering, Science Museum
3B: Patients and Lay Expertise, Panel 2
- "'Do not refuse to look at these pictures': the role of visual culture in nineteenth-century animal welfare activism"
J Keri Cronin, Department of Visual Studies, Brock University - "Vaccinators, 'bad niggers', and servants of the people: routine and revolutionary medicine in The Black Panther"
Dayle B DeLancey, Institute for the Medical Humanities, University of Texas-MB - "Inclusion and radicalism in tension: the changing relationship with biomedicine in Our Bodies, Ourselves: A New Edition for a New Era"
Margaret P Wardlaw, Institute for the Medical Humanities, University of Texas-MB - Moderator: Neil Pemberton, Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Manchester
This year's principal organiser, David Kirby, with Alice Bell
17.00-17.30 Break
17.30-18.30 Plenary Address
"Why can't 'science outreach' be more 'grown-up'?"
Professor John Pickstone, Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine; University of Manchester
19.30 Dance performance by Contact Theatre
Under the pool complex
SUNDAY 22 JUNE
09.00-11.00 Session Four
4A: Constructing Expertise
- "'What to do if it happens': expert advice and 'The Public' in British civil defence planning, 1945-68"
Melissa Smith, Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Manchester - "Print, publicity, and extrapolation in Newton's Principia"
Laura Miller, University of California-Santa Barbara - "Entertainment experts: the construction of scientific expertise in Hollywood"
David Kirby, Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Manchester
CHSTM alumna Dayle DeLancey
4B: Learning From Practice
- "From communication to participation: Lessons learnt from public engagement in hydrogen energy"
Miriam Ricci, Rob Flynn and Paul Bellaby, Institute for Social, Cultural and Policy Research, University of Salford - "Engaging with the public at the Manchester Science Festival"
K. Mathieson, L. Holmes, M. Leech, P. Finegold, D. Donnai and H.R. Middleton-Price, Nowgen and The University of Manchester - "Reluctant mentalities: Why is the British public wary of biomedical psychiatric research?"
Felicity Callard, Health Service and Population Research, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London - "Public dialogue and science policy"
Alison Crowther , Sciencewise-ERC
11.00-11.30 Break
11.30-13.00 Session Five
5A: Science and Nature on Television
- "Envisioning culture and inscribing knowledge: radio telescopes, television and interstellar communication around 1957-1968"
Ray Macauley, Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Manchester - "The battle over BBC science: serving public interest or 'the National Interest'?"
Allan Jones, Department of Communication and Systems, Open University - "Experts in the wild: the merits of intimacy"
Jean-Baptiste Gouyon, Department of Sociology, University of York
Delegates at lunch
5B: Science, Rhetoric and Politics
- "The role of advocacy in the popular evolutionary biology writing"
Fern Elsdon-Baker, Senior Scientific Advisor, Darwin 200, British Council - "The politics of accuracy: judging partisanship in global warming films"
Felicity Mellor, Science Communication Group, Imperial College - "'Racial' Science and Society after the Second World War"
Gavin Schaffer, University of Portsmouth
13.00-14.00 Lunch