Department of Science and Technology Studies
University College London
STS Seminar Series 2011-12
Term 2
All seminars take place on Mondays at 5.00pm
Venue: room 218 Chadwick Building, UCL
Building location:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/estates/roombooking/building-location/?id=013
All seminars are open to the public
Monday 30 January
Norma Morris, STS – UCL
Multiple faces of a long-term study of volunteers in biomedical
experiments: negotiating Research, Dissemination, Impact*
The subject of my talk is a collaborative project started around the
year 2000 and completed only last year, during which time it has gone
through many phases. Known for short as the 'Volunteers' project, and
focusing on the micro-level of individual research participants, it has
explored themes such as the scope for active lay participation in
hi-tech biomedical research, modelling researcher-researched
relationships, the work that goes in to building productive working
relationships, strategies called on to manage the social challenges of
the research situation, and assessing outcomes of participant involvement.
In this seminar I shall start with a resume of the project and some of
the main conclusions that I and my collaborators* came to. But beyond
that, I propose to use the project by way of a case study of the
interactions between research ideas and Government and funding bodies'
policies; sharing my experience of navigating through the old and new
policy priorities that promote Collaboration, User-involvement,
Dissemination, Impact, Special programmes, and discussing how this has
affected the research. How far this under-song is an inevitable and
transformative influence on public-funded research (and to what effect)
is matter for debate. In my case, I would go so far as to say I can see
an argument for crediting the funding body as a co-author.
* Chief collaborators were Dr Brian Balmer (STS Department) and
Professor Jeremy Hebden (Medical Physics and Bioengineering), who were
co-applicants on the various funding applications and co-authors of
published work. I take however sole responsibility for the views
expressed in this talk.
Forthcoming Seminars:
Monday 6 February
Huw Price (Philosophy, Cambridge/Sydney)
Time's Arrow and Eddington's Challenge
Monday 20 February
Maurizio Esposito (HPS, Leeds)
Romantic Biology from California’s Shores: The Scripps Marine
Association and its Unconventional Agenda - 1903-1923
Monday 5 March
Daniel Neyland (Management School, Lancaster University)
An Ethnography of Deleting: In search of the right to be forgotten
Monday 19 March
Richard Barnett (Wellcome Trust)
Dr. Lindsay’s Lemmings: Mad Beasts, Misanthropy and the Victorian Mind
--
Dr. Chiara Ambrosio
Teaching Fellow in Philosophy of Science
Department of Science and Technology Studies
University College London
Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT
Tel. (+44) 02076790166
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/staff/ambrosio
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/basc/
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