"Remaking participation: science, environment and emerging publics" by Dr. Jason Chilvers & Dr Matthew Kearnes

Past Event

Date
 15 December 2015, 4:00pm - 6:00pm

Location
 INSIS
64 Banbury Road, Oxford

This Special Seminar is organised by the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society, an Oxford Martin School Institute

Speakers:

  • Dr Jason Chilvers, Senior Lecturer, and Chair of the Science, Society and Sustainability (3S) Research Group, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia
  • Dr Matthew Kearnes, Australian Research Council Future Fellow and member of the Environmental Humanities group, School of Humanities and Languages, University of New South Wales

About the book: Changing relations between science and democracy - and controversies over issues like climate change, energy transitions, genetically modified organisms, and smart technologies - have led to a proliferation of new spaces of public participation and engagement. While most existing approaches adopt fixed meanings of ‘participation’ and are consumed by questions of method or critiquing the possible limits of democratic engagement, this book offers new insights that rethink public engagements with science, innovation and environmental issues as diverse, emergent and in the making. Bringing together leading scholars on science and democracy, working between science and technology studies, political theory, geography, sociology and anthropology, the volume develops relational and co-productionist approaches to studying and intervening in spaces of participation. New empirical insights into the making, construction, circulation and effects of participation across cultures are illustrated through examples ranging from climate change and energy to nanotechnology and mundane technologies, from institutionalised deliberative processes to citizen-led innovation and activism, and from the global north to global south. This new way of seeing participation in science and democracy opens up alternative paths for reconfiguring and remaking participation in more experimental, reflexive, anticipatory and responsible ways.

About the speakers

Jason Chilvers is a Senior Lecturer, and Chair of the Science, Society and Sustainability (3S) Research Group, in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia. His work, situated in the disciplines of science and technology studies (STS), geography and environmental science, focuses on relations between science, technology and society, including studies of governance, appraisal and public participation relating to science and sustainability. Jason has published widely on these themes in books, journal articles and policy reports, and was director of the ESRC ‘Critical Public Engagement’ Seminar Series in 2009–2011.

Matthew Kearnes is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow and member of the Environmental Humanities group at the School of Humanities and Languages, University of New South Wales. His research is situated between the fields of STS, human geography, environmental sociology and contemporary social theory. His current work is focused on the social and political dimensions of technological and environmental change, and he has published widely on the ways in which the development of novel and emerging technologies are entangled with profound social, ethical and normative questions. Matthew is a co-editor of the international open access journal Environmental Humanities (environmentalhumanities.org).