Publication Roundup

Since this blog was last updated, the staff and students at the Centre for Science and Society have been busy sharing their work. Courtney Addison and her colleagues wrote ‘Persuasive bodies: Testimonies of deep brain stimulation and Parkinson’s on YouTube’, published in Social Science and Medicine. Read it here. “In this paper, we examine amateur YouTube videos featuring […]

Imagining alternative futures | new book from Tim Corballis

Our Future is in the Air is the latest novel by Wellington author and Science in Society lecturer Dr Tim Corballis. The novel explores an alternative history of the 1970s, triggered by time-travel technology.  Lorraine Taylor talked to Tim about about his new book, his work and the ability of science fiction to ask the […]

Welcome back to Café Scientifique

After a year’s break the Wellington meeting of Café Scientifique has started with two successful events in July and August. Jesse Bering, a Dunedin based American evolutionary psychologist, in Wellington to talk to students of CREW352: Creative Science Writing, packed out VK’s Comedy Bar in Dixon Street with his favourite research topics: sex, death and […]

Want to be a science writer?

Ashleigh Young and Rebecca Priestley are teaching CREW352: Creative Science Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters again this year. Past students have included undergraduate science and humanities students, experienced writers and journalists, environmental advocates and practising scientists. Students on the course have written engaging non-fiction stories about science and had these stories published in […]

New ‘Antarctica Online’ Course

Following Rebecca and Cliff’s successful trip to Antarctica in December 2014, the Science in Society team have been working hard to put together a new fully online course called ‘Antarctica Online’. The course features lectures that were filmed on the ice and examines contemporary Antarctic scientific research, placing it in a wider scientific, historical, social and […]

We’re looking for a special someone to join our Science in Society team

For the last two years we (Rhian and Rebecca) have been getting by on a lot of adrenalin and with the support of an army of awesome tutors: but now we have new courses to launch and new plans to hatch and we need someone else to join our small, dynamic team. This is an 18-month […]

Reflections on SCIE 311: Science Communication

Between July – October 2015, Rebecca and I had the genuine pleasure of teaching a topic that we both love, to a class of fantastic, enthusiastic students. This was the first time either of us had taught Science Communication as a formal University course, and we while we had bold ambitions, we weren’t sure what […]