As recent events, such as the Black Lives Matter protests, have demonstrated academic research and researchers often play important roles in activist movements. Drawing on her own experience as a researcher activist, Dorothy Broom consider how to engage effectively with the different identities and responsibilities engendered by researcher activism and presents six starting points for a wider … Continued
Category: research communication
Making the invisible visible: how we depict COVID-19
How do you depict a microscopic bundle of proteins that in just a few months transformed the world? Sria Chatterjee (Max-Planck Kunsthistorisches Institut) looks at how the virus has been visualised in different contexts, and how new ways of tracking and seeing its spread have profound implications for individual freedom. This post first appeared on the LSE COVID-19 … Continued
Anti-racist science communication starts with recognising its globally diverse historical footprint
Science Communication is often presented as a unique response to and offshoot of the prevalence of western science in modern societies. Lindy Orthia and Elizabeth Rasekoala argue against this notion, suggesting that a temporally and culturally limited understanding of science communication, in turn promotes a limited discipline of science communication and serves to perpetuate a … Continued
Behavioural Economics on a Post-It
The COVID-19 lockdown has rapidly and radically changed academic life, disrupting the normal patterns of teaching and research that define the university. In this post, Adam Oliver reflects on how the lockdown led to him develop the behavioural economics on a post-it series and the particular challenges presented in reducing complex academic ideas to the … Continued
You can publish open access, but ‘big’ journals still act as gatekeepers to discoverability and impact
One of the proposed advantages of open access publication is that it increases the impact of academic research by making it more broadly and easily accessible. Reporting on a natural experiment on the citation impact of health research that is published in both open access and subscription journals, Chris Carroll and Andy Tattersall, suggests that … Continued
For science communication to be effective it should be evidence based
Effective communication of science to stakeholders across society is a more pressing issue than it has perhaps ever been. Highlighting ways in which science communication as an area of research and practice has struggled to function as an integrated discipline, Eric Jensen and Alexander Gerber argue that for science communication to continue to develop and … Continued
To drive innovation, scientists should open their doors to more equitable relations with the arts
Interdisciplinary collaborations between scientific researchers and artists can often be one dimensional, with artists simply illustrating scientific findings. In this post Paige Jarreau argues that by engaging more openly and equitably with artists scientists and other researchers stand not only to better understand their own research and its reception, but also to develop new insights … Continued
Editorial: Social science in a time of social distancing
The spread of the Covid-19 virus has presented an unparalleled challenge for society, academia and the social sciences. As universities across the UK and the world have halted teaching activities, closed campuses and moved to online forms of working, major changes have been asked of individuals and society as a whole. As of last week, … Continued
Don’t Just Debunk Covid-19 Myths. Learn From Them
The spread of Covid-19 across the globe has gone hand in hand with the spread of rumours and myth about the virus. In this repost, Anita Makri, discusses how social science research has played a vital role in responding to previous epidemics and argues that rather seeing Covid-19 myths as a problem of information deficit, they … Continued
Four principles for practising and evaluating co-production – a view from sustainability research.
The co-production paradigm has become commonplace across many disciplines as a means of orchestrating the production of useful knowledge aligned to different social needs. Drawing on the expertise of 36 co-production practitioners in the field of sustainability research, Dr Albert Norström, Dr Chris Cvitanovic, Dr Marie F. Löf, Dr Simon West and Dr Carina Wyborn, present … Continued