Highly Impure and Hot to Handle:
The Challenge of Communicating the Objects of Contemporary Bioscience

An International Seminar to be held at the Department of History of
Medicine/Medical History Museum, University of Copenhagen, 26th October
2001.

The boundary between basic and applied research is breaking down in the
contemporary biosciences. Increasingly, biological research is being
re-visioned as not just a mode of discovery but more importantly, an
expanding horizon of invention with a completely new interface with society
at large. This situation poses many complex challenges for science
communicators as the new objects of research they confront come more
completely to resemble open and creative feats of engineering rather than
stable and incontrovertible facts of nature. More constructed than given;
more hybrid than pure, many of the most prized objects of contemporary
bioscience are acquiring the character of complex materialities into which
variable human values and ambitions are being both experimentally and
controversially inscribed.

If the biosciences today are unveiling the previously unimaginable and no
longer simply the previously unknown how should science communicators
rethink their professional identities and responsibilities? Is the
contemporary situation increasingly one in which the very survival of the
objects of contemporary biological research is dependent upon the strategic
intervention of science communicators?

The aim of this one-day international seminar will be to bring together
perspectives from both leading scholars and practitioners on the challenges
facing science communicators in their encounters with the objects of
contemporary bioscience. Can a renewed interest in approaching the history
of science through transformations in the details of its material culture be
successfully adapted to illuminate and contextualize contemporary
developments? To what extent can the objects of contemporary bioscience be
rendered negotiable through accelerated modes of science communication
mobilizing new media and emphasizing interactivity and spontaneous feedback?

Through the seminar the viewpoints of professionals working in different
media such as exhibitions, journalism and television will be compared and
contrasted with those of scholars with both natural scientific and
humanistic backgrounds. The hope is that discussions will be able to
contribute to the establishment of more reflective foundations for the
development of science communication in the future.

The seminar will encompass plenary sessions with invited speakers and
discussants and a concluding panel discussion. A 200 word paper abstract
from each invited speaker will be required by 31st May 2001. For further
information regarding the seminar, please contact Thomas Söderqvist
([log in to unmask]) or Adam Bencard ([log in to unmask]; phone: +45 3532
3800), both at the Department of History of Medicine/Medical History Museum,
University of Copenhagen, or Mark Elam ([log in to unmask]) at the Department
of Sociology, University of Copenhagen (tel. +45 3532 3233).