We will be hosting New Zealand and international academics to talk about contemporary issues relating to science, technology and the environment – how they impact our lives and societies, and how we can respond to them.
Details on past and upcoming seminars are below. All welcome!
If you have any questions please contact us at scienceinsociety@vuw.ac.nz
Upcoming events
Details for the seminars happening in 2021 will be posted here when available.
Not a solution but a plan: Anticipatory Governance of geoengineering
Date: Thursday October 6 2021. 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Zoom: contact us for details
The simultaneous rising of emissions and Earth’s temperature demand drastic measures. Technologies under the umbrella of ‘geoengineering’ (GE) promise to limit global temperatures, although they are risky and uncertain. Although it is impossible to see a clear outcome of either the climate crisis as it unfolds today or the possible usage of GE technologies, they must be anticipated.
Anticipatory Governance (AG) offers a capacity oriented process to strengthen foresight, public engagement and interdisciplinary research, all under a strategic vision. This presentation will investigate AG as de facto and future governance, as governance to enable and to restrict, as well as a prescriptive approach and analytic tool.
Nils Matzner is a post-doctoral researcher in Sociology of Science at the Technical University of Munich. He researches and teaches governance and responsibility of new climate technologies, as well as interdisciplinary, mixed methods, discourse and network research. He studied Political Science at RWTH Aachen University. He worked in 2011 and from 2012 to 2014 at the RWTH Aachen University and from 2011 to 2012 at the Goethe University Frankfurt. Further, he worked from 2014 to 2020 at the University of Klagenfurt in a research project funded by the German Research Foundation in its Priority Program 1689 on Climate Engineering. In 2019 he earned his doctoral degree in Science and Technology Studies.
Past events
Climate Change in the Kiwi Mind: An Audience Segmentation Analysis
Date: Thursday July 5 2021. 1:00 pm – 2:00pm
‘Know your public’ is the first step in effective public engagement campaigns. Based on a national sample survey (N = 1083) conducted in March 2021, audience segmentation analysis of New Zealanders’ climate change beliefs, attitudes, behaviours, and policy preferences show five distinct publics: Alarmed, Concerned, Cautious, Doubtful, and Dismissive. Building on research in New Zealand, Australia, and the US, this talk will discuss challenges and opportunities to engage these diverse publics by government and advocacy groups. Understanding how people make sense of and respond to climate change will help tailor messages that are aligned with the needs and values of the target audiences.
JT or Dr. Jagadish Thaker is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Communication, Journalism and Marketing, Massey University. He is an affiliate researcher with the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, and Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation. His research examines ways to understand and enhance public, business, and policy engagement with the issues of climate change and health.
The establishment of the Matariki-Puanga national holiday
Date: Friday May 28 2021. 12:00 noon – 1:00 pm
The revitalization of Māori astronomy has led to the growing desire for communities to reconnect and reclaim ancestral knowledge of the sun, moon and stars. Within Māori astronomy sits a framework of time called the maramataka, the Māori calendar system, that alongside celestial knowledge, weaves environmental and ecological knowledge which is used to understand and track time. Matariki and Puanga are some of the main stars within the maramataka that signify the Māori New Year. As New Zealanders learn and engage in Matariki and Puanga celebrations, Māori communities are growing and regaining their knowledge and cultural practices associated with these stars. With the Prime Minister earlier this year announcing that Matariki is to be a national holiday, I will discuss the different ways that Māori and non-Māori communities are currently celebrating this time and how New Zealanders can learn to celebrate and honour the Māori New Year together with greater cultural understanding.
Dr Pauline Harris is from the tribes Rongomaiwahine, Ngāti Rakaipaka and Ngāti Kahungunu. She is a Senior Lecturer for the Centre for Science and Society at Victoria University of Wellington (VUW). Dr Harris is an astrophysicist who has specialized in high energy neutrino production and inflationary cosmology. Dr Harris’s research currently focuses on mātauranga Māori associated with Māori astronomy, Māori calendars called maramataka aswell as climate change. Currently, Dr Harris is the Chairperson of the Society for Māori Astronomy Research and Traditions (SMART). She is also the Principal Investigator for the Marsden funded project called Ngā Takahuringa ō te Ao: The Effect of Climate Change on Traditional Māori calendars. Most recently Dr Harris has been appointed to the Matariki Advisory Group to the government to determine the date and advise on the Matariki holiday.
Science in the media – News in the time of the pandemic
Date: Friday May 21 2021. 12:00 noon – 1:00 pm
With over a decade of experience working on the front lines of breaking news and science in Aotearoa New Zealand, the Science Media Centre is uniquely placed to track the ways controversial issues emerge and evolve in the public arena. From climate change and disease outbreaks to meth-contaminated houses, pesticides and natural disasters, their team understands first-hand the pressures shaping journalism. With a particular focus on science communication during the Covid-19 pandemic, this seminar will look in depth at how the SMC takes practical steps to improve the quality and depth of news coverage of critical issues that impact society.
Dacia Herbulock is Director of the Science Media Centre, an independent, publicly-funded initiative supporting high quality journalism on science, health, technology, environment and the implications of emerging research for society. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the SMC has been instrumental in linking essential news media with relevant experts to provide evidence-based context on everything from coronavirus vaccines and immunity rates to impacts on rural communities and the psychological impact of lockdown.
Dacia joined the SMC at its launch in 2008 with media experience covering science, environment and social issues for Radio New Zealand’s Our Changing World, as well as US public radio, documentary production and network television news while studying abroad in Beijing.
She is an Adjunct Research Fellow with the Centre for Science in Society at Victoria University of Wellington and Executive Committee member of the Science Communicators’ Association of New Zealand (SCANZ).
Astropsychology: SETI and Mind Perception
Date: Friday May 7 2021. 12:00 noon – 1:00 pm
Until we can travel to distant planets and see whether aliens inhabit them, we are limited to searching the skies for relevant evidence. The science of astrobiology uses our understanding of earthbound organisms to look for signs of life (any life, including microbes and plants) in the cosmos. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), however, is a psychological quest: it looks not just for life but for intelligent, sentient minds.
Would we recognise evidence for such minds if we came across it, though? In this talk, I will discuss why this question is as much about us as about aliens: how do people identify and distinguish minds from mindless objects in their environment? In psychology, this is known as the question of mind perception; and just as astrobiology draws insights from biology, SETI should draw on emerging insights from behavioural sciences about what makes people perceive minds as the cause of events in their environment.
Such insights may help us formulate criteria for recognising alien minds—and avoiding false alarms—in cosmic observations. People are bad at distinguishing intentional activity from naturally-occurring physical phenomena, terrible at recognising randomness, and prone to seeing meaningful patterns in noise. People intuitively perceive minds not as a single concept but as a composite of independent factors, termed agency (intentional planning and acting) and experience (subjective feelings). I will describe what this implies for our perception of both terrestrial and extraterrestrial minds, and how we can use speculative fiction to help us define the landscape of relevant observations.
Dr. David Carmel is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. He is a cognitive neuroscientist who studies mind perception and consciousness in the human brain.
“A front row seat – science advice in Aotearoa New Zealand’s COVID-19 response” by Professor Dame Juliet Gerrard FRSNZ, HonFRSC
Date: Wednesday April 28 2021. 12:00 noon – 1:00 pm
In this talk Juliet will give a personal account of the science-policy interface in an emergency setting. In particular, she will focus on how the role of PM’s Chief Science Advisor adapts to urgency, how the information flows to decision makers, and the critical role of other science advisors and science communicators.
Professor Dame Juliet Gerrard trained at Oxford University and moved to Aotearoa in 1993, where her career has included roles in Crown Research Institutes and universities. Juliet’s research background is broad and interdisciplinary, with particular interest in fundamental and applied protein science. She has held an Industry and Outreach Fellowship with Callaghan Innovation, founded a start-up company, chaired the Marsden Council, served on the Board of Directors of Plant and Food Research, and is currently on the Board of Te Papa.
Since Juliet’s appointment in 2018 as the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor, Kaitohutohu Mātanga Pūtaiao Matua ki te Pirimia, she has worked from a base of four founding principles: rigour, inclusivity, transparency, and accessibility. She has supported the science and science advisor community to provide advice to the PM, ministers, and the public on a wide range of topics, including advice on the Christchurch mosque shootings, the response to the Whakaari | White Island eruption, the Cannabis referendum and the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2019, the Office released a major report, Rethinking Plastics in Aotearoa New Zealand, which created a vision for a new relationship with plastic.
Writing the Tasman
Date: Friday March 26 2021. 12:00 noon – 1:00 pm
In late 2018, when Su was living in Wollongong, we decided to write letters. These letters were to form a project focused on the Tasman Sea—we would be writing about the Tasman, but our letters would also be materially crossing it, and so the words and the paper and whatever other materials would, we hoped, cross and trace its coasts and boundaries. We were first interested in the Tasman because it wasn’t quite a thing in itself. Though located unambiguously between the coasts of Australia and New Zealand, it was harder to locate other boundaries. Its waters wouldn’t stay put, nor its marine fauna; it was an area on a map but also a series of routes.
We sent letters, postcards and photos—and one audio recording on a USB stick—back and forth from late 2018 to mid 2020. The project traversed not only space but also a year and a half when the Tasman itself was altered by the crises of the globe. This was another way in which the sea reached beyond itself, all the coal and oil in the world conspiring to feed Australia’s worst ever bushfire season and then send the smoke across to us here to give everything a sepia tint. Almost immediately afterwards, the global pandemic grounded flights and reinforced the sea as border between Australia and New Zealand.
In this seminar we will present two of our ‘letters’, written for the ASLEC-ANZ ‘Strange Letters’ symposium in February 2021, and discuss the project.
Dr Susan Ballard is Associate Professor of Art History at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Her research spans the fields of art history, creative nonfiction, and the environmental humanities, with a particular focus on artists from Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. She often works in collaboration. Her books include Alliances in the Anthropocene: Fire, Plants and People (with Christine Eriksen), 100 Atmospheres: Studies in Scale and Wonder (with the MECO network) and Art and Nature in the Anthropocene: Planetary Aesthetics (coming out in March 2021).
Dr Tim Corballis is Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Science in Society at Victoria University of Wellington. His practice includes fiction, art and academic writing as well as art collaboration, and has turned recently toward the political aesthetics of science and technology. He is the author, most recently, of Our Future is in the Air (VUP, 2017) and, with Fiona Amundsen, the multi-channel video and text installation Human Hand at the Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt.
Documentary screening: “Intersexion”
Date: Friday March 5 2021. 12:00 noon – 2:00 pm
Is it a boy? Is it a girl? What if it’s neither? This award-winning documentary explores the world of the intersexed (formerly known as hermaphrodites)—those born with any one of 30 conditions that make their gender ambiguous. Presenter Mani Bruce Mitchell—New Zealand’s first ‘out’ intersex person—and director Grant Lahood had to travel overseas to find interviewees who would talk freely. They discuss living in a society with a binary view of gender which, at best, has made them all but invisible; and, at worst, has subjected many to damaging “corrective” surgery. Read more here.
The screening will be followed by a discussion with Georgia Andrews and Dr Rogena Sterling.
Georgia Andrews (she/her)
Georgia grew up on a sheep and beef farm in rural Central Otago. Following the completion of a BTchg (Primary) at the University of Otago in 2013, Georgia worked extensively across the youth disability sector before commencing her Rainbow and Inclusion Adviser role at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, Student Academic Services (Retention, Achievement and Equity). Outside of work, as an intersex and lesbian woman, Georgia is passionate about advocating for the rights of the Rainbow community and speaks internationally at human rights conferences.
Dr Rogena Sterling (she/her)
Rogena is specialist in identity, intersex, equality and human rights. Currently researching in areas of Indigenous and Māori data sovereignty, Māori rights and interests in data, categorisation in data and biopolitics, and social policy at Te Kotahi Research Institute at the University of Waikato. Rogena has given talks on intersex at various events and in education courses.
Storying sea rise: Can storytelling reduce the distance people feel to sea level rise and inspire action?
Date: Friday February 26 2021. 10:30 am – 12:00 noon
Sea level rising is happening now, but we are not too late to prepare for it. crafting careful stories about sea level rise may increase the awareness and likelihood of taking action.
Can storytelling applied in a certain way reduce the distance people feel to sea level rise and inspire action? How might stories be used to reduce the distance people feel between themselves and the reality of the rising ocean? How are we already telling stories of sea level rise in Aotearoa? What guides exist and how can they be used to assess the stories already out there or be used to craft new stories? To explore these questions I will create a corpus of sea level rise stories from Aotearoa, interview a range of sea level rise storytellers, develop a series of story based interventions and ask audiences to respond to these. These will be considered in relation to the recommendations of the Communications handbook for IPCC scientists (Corner et al, 2018), Susanne Moser’s recommendations of best practice climate change communication (2016), and Ursula Le Guin’s “Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” (1986).
The Centre for Science in Society invites you to a talk by Zoë Heine, a NZ SeaRise funded PhD candidate supervised by Assoc. Profs. Rebecca Priestley and Rhian Salmon. Leading up to the submission of her PhD proposal in early 2021, Zoë is seeking feedback on her plans for this interdisciplinary project. Zoë’s 30 minute presentation will be followed by 30 minutes formal question
and discussion time, and a chance for informal discussion. Zoë is a PhD candidate from the Centre for Science in Society. She has a master’s degree in Science in Society and a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies.
Screening of Picture a Scientist
Date: Tuesday September 22 2020. 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm
Picture a Scientist chronicles the groundswell of researchers who are writing
a new chapter for women scientists. Biologist Nancy Hopkins, chemist Raychelle Burks, and geologist Jane Willenbring lead viewers on a journey deep into their own experiences in the sciences, ranging from brutal harassment to years of subtle slights. Along the way, from cramped laboratories to spectacular field stations, we encounter scientific luminaries – including social scientists, neuroscientists, and psychologists – who provide new perspectives on how to make science itself more diverse, equitable, and open to all.
The grim reaper’s second harvest: The 1918 influenza pandemic in Dunedin
Date: Thursday August 13 2020. 12:00 noon – 1:00 pm
Location: See our Facebook page for a recording.
Nine thousand New Zealanders died in the worldwide influenza pandemic of 1918 for which the country was ill-prepared. The depleted public health organisation muddled through thanks to regional empowerment and the sharing of ideas, as demonstrated in Dunedin. This presentation will explore how the health system worked, identify the key individuals involved, the measures taken to prevent and contain the outbreak, and the effects of the pandemic. The influenza pandemic also gave an enduring legacy of public health organisation and legislation date-stamped 1920, but which was crucial to managing COVID-19 a century later.
Dr Warwick Brunton is an honorary senior lecturer in the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine, University of Otago. He is a health historian and former public health administrator and policy-maker in the Department / Ministry of Health (1972–96) and Associate Dean (International) in the Health Sciences Division (2004–12). His PhD thesis studied the development of national mental health policy in New Zealand, 1840–1947. Warwick has published a number of papers on public health, health legislation, mental health, public inquiries and health care organisation in New Zealand.
The COVID Pandemic: Lessons for the future of food and energy
Date: Thursday July 30 2020. 11:00 am – 12:00 noon
Location: See our Facebook page for a recording.
The COVID pandemic brought home to many of us just how precarious our civilisation has become, a reminder of just how temporary and insecure human civilisations have been in the past. We are now at a point in history where this civilisation faces an unprecedented storm of imminent existential threats from living planet issues like climate and biodiversity crises to more human centered issues like antibiotic resistance and inequality.
Almost all our planetary life support systems are teetering at the edge of or falling over tipping points. In NZ and much of the world to produce food we have destroyed the self-organising ecosystems that had co-evolved over millennia and replaced them with energy intensive fossil-fuelled farming and processing systems dependant on mechanical and chemical intervention. These interventions have major ecosystem and human health impacts and we must radically change how we live and produce food.
Dr Mike Joy has developed bioassessment tools used by many regional councils and consultants. He has published scientific papers in many fields from artificial intelligence and data mining to the freshwater ecology of sub-Antarctic islands. He has been working for two decades at the interface of science and policy in New Zealand. Mike has been working for two decades at the interface of science and policy in New Zealand. In his role as senior researcher with the Institute of Governance and Policy Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, he works on improving the connection between science, policy, and real outcomes to address the multiple environmental issues facing New Zealand.
One thousand ways to story a toxin
Date: Monday June 15 2020. 12:00 noon – 1:00 pm
Location: See our Facebook page for a recording.
Tetrodotoxin (TTX) is a neurotoxin that accumulates benignly in starfish, pufferfish and blue-ringed octopus, but that blocks nerve signals in mammals that consume it, inducing paralysis, even death.
TTX is swimming in storyings. In Japan, stories surround a traditional delicacy of pufferfish (fugu) that is lethal when incorrectly prepared. In Haiti, TTX powder is linked to voodoo practices of controlled poisoning that leave victims in a zombie-like state, between death and life. Stories about TTX travel, moving between academia, pop culture, and variously located everyday discourses. My talk takes up TTX’s biomedical repositioning as a treatment for managing pain. I recognise this as one instance in a long history of Western biomedicine incorporating elements from culturally distinct medicinal practices, and re-framing those elements within biomedical conventions. Recent international clinical trials of TTX as pain-management are one such procedural re-framing of this neurotoxin, and they offer a site in which scientific narrative negotiations of folklore and the neuromateriality of life can be understood.
Dr Mythily Meher is an anthropologist, feminist STS scholar and a migrant settler living and working in Aotearoa New Zealand. Her research on scientific knowledge and healthcare draws together ethnographic detail, a decolonising praxis, and attention to affective forces in order study, theorise and work towards transformative justice. This work is motivated by the subversive potential that is latent in infrastructures and institutions, and the urgency with which we must turn this potential towards addressing inequities. She is currently a Research Fellow at the University of Auckland investigating the potential for greater health equity through transport infrastructure, and is also developing research tracing a toxin through diverse ecological and scientific epistemes.
Mirrors on the land: Histories of lakes, limnology, and law
Date: Monday 8 June, 12:00 noon – 1:00 pm
Location: See our Facebook page for a recording.
My work on Mirrors on the Land: Histories of New Zealand’s lakes raises questions at the confluence of history, science and law. In this talk I discuss the history of lake science in New Zealand. How have limnologists here come to understand our lakes, and how they may differ from lakes elsewhere?
And how has that understanding informed environmental management, policy and law? Scientists have been acutely aware of the link between our declining freshwater quality and the increasing intensification of land use since the 1970s. How and why has this knowledge failed to prevent accelerating pollution of so many of our lakes and the destruction of their biodiversity?
Dr Jonathan West is a historian broadly interested in how people and place have shaped one another in Aotearoa New Zealand. He grew up in and around Dunedin, and studied English, Political Studies, and latterly History at the University of Otago. His first book The Face of Nature: An Environmental History of the Otago Peninsula recently won the W. H. Oliver Prize for best book on New Zealand history, won the J. M. Sherrard Award in New Zealand Regional and Local History, and was a finalist in the 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. This year his essay with David Haines on labour in the maritime Tasman world won the Bert Roth Award for Labour History. He manages the Historian team at The Office for Maori Crown Relations – Te Arawhiti. He has enjoyed a year’s leave from his role to take up the J. D. Stout Fellowship at the Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies, at Victoria University of Wellington, to work on his next book Mirrors on the Land: Histories of New Zealand Lakes.
Science in a crisis
Date: Monday 25 May, 12:00 noon – 1:00 pm
Location: See our Facebook page for a recording.
New Zealand’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been underpinned by a sustained transdisciplinary effort across the research community. New programmes of research have had to be launched in the midst of a global crisis, with research agendas well ahead of the government’s understanding of its own needs. The goals and outcomes of this research have had to be communicated to the public and policy-makers simultaneously, in a highly-charged political environment. New Zealand’s own research has had to be synthesised with a fast-moving and often confusing international literature.
In this talk, I will describe some of my experiences in being involved in this effort, including my preliminary observations on what has worked, what hasn’t, and what we might need in the coming years as we continue to manage this and other crises. In particular, I will argue that it is unstructured and open collaborative approaches that were most effective in the early phase of the crisis, but that this has not come without some costs. I will suggest ways in which we might strengthen the research community’s ability to respond to this and future crises.
Professor Shaun Hendy FRSNZ is the Director of Te Pūnaha Matatini (‘the meeting place of many faces’), a New Zealand Centre of Research Excellence that brings together mathematical and computational scientists with ecologists, social scientists, and the humanities in a transdisciplinary research environment to focus on complex systems. He is also on the M. bovis eradication Strategic Science Advisory Group for Biosecurity New Zealand and is leading the COVID-19 modelling effort for the National Crisis Management Centre. In 2013 he was awarded ANZIAM’s E. O. Tuck medal for research in applied mathematics. He is also a well-known science communicator, and in 2012, he was awarded the Prime Minister’s Science Media Communication Prize. He is co-founder of two start-up companies, Toha and Nebula.
Are we (finally) cyborgs: COVID-19, digital technologies, and knowing from others
Date: Monday 11 May 2020, 12:00 noon – 1:00 pm
Location: See our Facebook page for a recording.
35 years ago, in The Cyborg Manifesto, Donna Harraway proposed we reimagine the world, and our place in it, by moving away from thinking of ourselves as having an ‘essential’ human or animal nature, inviting us to think of ourselves as cyborgs, as a chimeric union between animal and machine. So as I appear to you mediated through Zoom, speaking into a microphone, extending myself into your space via your computer screen, are we (finally) cyborgs?
In this presentation, I want to think about the way COVID-19 has amplified our reliance on technologies. Technologies have always allowed us to extend our potential, from transportation to communication, and in a trivial way, we have nearly always been cyborgs. While some of this extending of our potential is beneficial, some is problematic. What I focus on here are the digital communicative technologies; those technologies that allow us to share information, communicate content, and so on. From Google to Zoom to Qualtrics, the pervasiveness with which these technologies interfere in/interact with our lives alters how we know, who we know from, what we count as knowledge, and what gets left out. I am especially interested in what these technologies’ impact on our experience of knowing means for us as academics interacting in the relationship between science and society, and for us humans as (somewhat) rational beings.
Dr Fabien Medvecky is a social epistemologist. He studies the relationship between knowledge and society and how social interactions shape, create and direct what counts as knowledge. And there’s no better space to study this than science communication and science policy. He usually take a philosophical approach in his studies, though he also engages in empirical research. Basically, data without good reasoning isn’t particularly insightful, and reasoning without grounding it or relating it to the empirical world isn’t particularly meaningful. He is especially into value-laden topics, from ethics to economics (the discipline, not the economy). He is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Science Communication at the University of Otago.
COVID-19: How the epidemic is evolving and human endeavours
Date: Monday 4 May 2020, 12:00 noon – 1:00 pm
Location: See our Facebook page for a recording.
COVID-19 is not the apocalypse, but it is challenging us as leaders, scientists, health professionals, and as a community.
The traditional approaches to some solutions have been thrown out the window, and less than four months after China told the WHO they had a problem a lot has happened—some of it truly inspirational. We will look at the build-up to this global health emergency and where we are at since that day, 31 December 2019. Our ultimate exit strategy from this pandemic will rely on vaccines. This presentation with cover what, where, and how, vaccines are being progressed by new approaches to investment, discovery, development, and production.
Dr Helen Petousis-Harris is an Associate Professor in the Department of General Practice and Primary Health Care at the University of Auckland, and the Director of the Vaccine Datalink and Research Group. She has a PhD in Vaccinology and is particularly interested in factors associated with vaccine safety and reactogenicity, and the performance and safety of vaccines. Helen has a blog primarily devoted to vaccines and vaccination where she often discusses vaccine myths and matters of current interest in vaccinology. She is the Chair of the WHO Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety (GACVS).
Science in the media: Disasters, outbreaks and experts
Date: Monday 16th March 2020, 12:00 noon – 12:50 pm
With over a decade of experience working on the front lines of breaking news and complex science in Aotearoa New Zealand, the Science Media Centre is uniquely placed to track the ways controversial issues emerge and evolve in the public arena. Using the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19) and the Whakaari / White Island volcanic eruption as case studies, this seminar will examine the realities of modern media, misinformation and hype, trust in science and the role of experts in a crisis.
Dacia Herbulock is Director of the Science Media Centre. She joined the SMC at its launch in 2008 with experience covering science, environment and social issues across radio, film, documentary and television news in New Zealand and abroad. Over the past decade, she has designed and led initiatives to broaden New Zealand’s network of media savvy experts, improve journalists’ understanding of complex science issues and make relevant information accessible to the media when science is in the headlines. She is an Adjunct Research Fellow with the Centre for Science in Society at Victoria University of Wellington.
Innovation communication: Bridging science communication and responsible innovation
Date: Thursday 13 February 2020, 11:00 am – 12:00 pm
This talk takes its point of departure in the literature on Responsible Innovation and argue that it has under-emphasized the issue of communication. While some address the need for transparency and open dialogue (Stilgoe et al, 2013; Pidgeon et al, 2013), I will argue that there is a need for a much broader idea of ‘innovation communication’ (Plesner & Horst 2012; Davies & Horst 2016) in RRI. ‘Innovation Communication’ should be defined as an integral part of the innovation process, which aims at generating support for the development of an innovation such that it can become a stable part of the emergent socio-material reality. This includes explicitly developed communication strategies but also more implicit organizational messages and even the innovation process itself. Seen in this way, science communication is a significant and central element of the entire innovation process and therefore also of Responsible Innovation. The talk will use empirical examples from different technological domains such as bioteknology, self-driving cars and renewable energy.
Maja Horst is Professor of Responsible Technology at the Technical University of Denmark and Professor of Science Communication at University of Copenhagen. Her research is focused on responsible research and innovation, public engagement with science, management and communication of research. She has published widely, including the 2016 book Science Communication: Culture, Identity and Citizenship co-authored with Sarah R Davies. Maja Horst has also been experimenting with interactive science communication installations inviting citizens to discuss the social responsibility of emerging scientific fields. For this, she was awarded the Danish Science Minister’s Communication Prize in 2009.
The uses and abuses of Māori ancestral remains in the development of western Science
Date: Thursday 7 November 2019, 11:00 am – 12:00 noon
The repatriation movement is gaining considerable momentum across the world, yet the history of the collection, sale and research of Ancestral Human Remains still remains largely unknown. In Aotearoa New Zealand, the collection, or more correctly theft, of tūpuna Māori (Māori ancestors) for the purposes of increasing Western knowledge about the development of the human species and the coming of the Māori, is a part of our history that needs to be brought to light. This seminar looks at the development of Western science in New Zealand in relation to the study of Māori ancestral remains and how this has developed into more modern scientific research which is being undertaken today as part of the repatriation process.
Dr Amber Aranui is the researcher for the Karanga Aotearoa Repatriation Programme at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, where she undertakes provenance research to aid in the return of Māori and Moriori ancestral remains back to their descendant communities. In her work as the programme’s researcher over the past 11 years Amber has developed an interest in the collection and trade of human remains and the effects this had on indigenous peoples throughout the world. Amber has a background in Anthropology and Archaeology and has recently completed a PhD with Victoria University of Wellington, focusing on Māori perspectives around repatriation and scientific research of Māori ancestral remains.
Amber is of Ngāti Kahungunu and Ngāti Tūwharetoa, descent, and is dedicated to working with iwi Māori as well as other indigenous peoples throughout the world.
Academic showcase 2019
Date: Thursday 24 October 2019, 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Public mistrust of science
Date: Thursday 10 October 2019, 12:00 noon – 1:00 pm
Scientific evidence seems to have lost its authority to persuade. In a new world of easily accessible, rapid, mass communication all kinds of ideas—good and bad—can travel fast. A deluge of information leads to people seeking simplicity, yet ideas without evidence may often be dressed up in the sometimes deliberately obscure language of science. In this talk Richard Arnold will discuss some of the reasons why it’s hard for evidence to be seen as convincing in today’s world. He’ll use examples from statistics, politics, health and sport to investigate why and when we choose to believe.
Richard Arnold began his research career in astronomy, and after working in medical and official statistics is a statistician and data scientist. He has published in a variety of domains of applied statistics including statistical seismology, fisheries and the theory of reliability. He has an interest in the communication of science and has been the election night statistician for TVNZ at the last four elections.
Diagnosis – Truths and tales
Date: Thursday 19 September 2019, 11:00 am – 12 noon
The announcement of a serious diagnosis is a solemn moment, where a person’s life may seem to be forever cleaved into “before” and “after”. It is also the beginning of a new story, a story we can all imagine, even if we have never received such a diagnosis. In this presentation, critical diagnosis scholar, Annemarie Jutel, will shed light on the many stories we tell about diagnosis, and will ponder the degree to which these stories influence the experience, and the possibility of their retelling in different forms.
Opening science: The principles and practice of citizen science – Monica Peters
Date: Monday 26 August 2019, 11:00 am – 12 noon
Citizen science has emerged as a powerful means to democratise scientific research. Well-designed studies can fill important knowledge gaps in addition to fulfilling public engagement goals. In NZ, community-based environmental monitoring (in the context of restoration initiatives) forms a large component of citizen science but research initiatives now include public/environmental health and disaster management dimensions. This presentation will chart a course through the history of citizen science, define the field and review the key principles that distinguish citizen science from traditional scientific practice. The emergence of citizen science associations in Europe, the US, Australia, Asia and now NZ reveals a more critical focus on citizen science practice and a desire to mainstream new methods of working that have a robust philosophical foundation and practical outcomes.
Monica works freelance at the interface between science and the public on diverse community conservation-focussed projects throughout New Zealand. She chairs a Citizen Science Think Tank in Wellington, which aims to bring greater strategic direction to citizen science in NZ as well as enhance the credibility of citizen science as a research method. Monica is also on the executive of Forest and Bird and blogs regularly under www.monicalogues.com on citizen science and community-led environmental restoration. She was recently awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship to research citizen science policy and applications in Hong Kong, UK, Germany and Austria.