Imperial College London

Post-Doc, Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine

Other Affiliations: University of East Anglia, Environmental Science

Research Associate, One Medicine?

About

I am an interdisciplinary academic specialising in the sociology, history and communication of the late 20th and early 21st century life sciences.  My interests span several key areas: science / environmental communications and media; expertise and disciplines; public engagement; visual research; and human-animal studies.  My work is centrally concerned with the construction and communication of knowledge and expertise in the public sphere, particularly in the context of public scientific controversies; and how in turn this shapes disciplinary interactions and political and societal decision making. In general I employ a synthetic approach to research which encompasses quantitative and qualitative analyses of print, broadcast and ‘new’ media material.  In order to gain further insight into the academic and media practices shaping such material, I usually combine these ‘textual’ analyses with qualitative interviewing and/or focus group work.

I have recently joined the ‘One medicine? Investigating human and animal disease’ project at Imperial College, where I will be investigating the contemporary ‘One Health’ movement for managing disease across humans and animals. 

My most recent research prior to this was investigating the ongoing public controversy in the UK over the transmission of bovine TB (bTB) between domestic cattle and wild badger populations, and whether badgers should be culled to help manage the disease.  This work has mapped out the network of alliances and oppositions between the many scientific disciplines involved in badger/bTB, alongside expert professions such as veterinary practitioners and farmers, policymakers, politicians, NGO campaigners and activists.  It involved a combination of quantitative and qualitative media analysis, examination of cultural sources about badgers, and interviewing key actors in the debate.  The work is currently under review in various journals, but key findings include the role of dichotomised cultural framings of badgers in the bTB controversy, and their links to historical debates over badgers and humans; the role of specialist media practices, particularly those of environmental and agricultural journalism, in shaping the contemporary  controversy; and the role of scientific evidence (and contrasting expectations of what science is and can do) in public contestation over badger culling.  This and some adjacent research on urban foxes in the UK media has also explored the role of human / animal boundaries, and the breaching of these boundaries, in conflicts between humans and animals.  This research was funded by an Interdisciplinary Early Career Fellowship from the Rural Economy and Land Use (RELU) programme.

Prior to the Fellowship I worked on a three year RELU funded project at the University of Leeds, investigating knowledge and communication of food chain risks. During this time we developed an unusual visual technique for social research, which we refer to as the ‘fuzzy felt method’.  This method is highly suited to researching people’s understandings of complex systems, such as are seen in modern systems of food production. It involves asking a small group of to work together to create an image of such a system (in this case risks in the food chain).  We found that this activity helped non-expert participants explore their thoughts and ideas without being intimidated by their lack of familiarity with the issue at hand; it also proved to be helpful for specialist participants exploring the issue at a broader, more holistic level than they were able to do in their day to day work.  Using this methodology, we found that publics, food campaigners and farmers tended to conceptualise food chain risk much more broadly, as well as more severely, than industry and scientists/regulators: a finding which has important implications for public communication about food risks.

My doctoral research, carried out at the University of Edinburgh, was a case study of public debates in the UK media over the newly emerging subject of evolutionary psychology (EP).  I carried out qualitative and quantitative analyses of this media coverage, alongside interviewing the academics and media professionals who had been involved in the controversy.  The main proponents and opponents of EP used the mass media to reach audiences beyond the boundaries of their own disciplines.  This public visibility of the ‘new science’ of EP helped it become established in academia, whilst also criticising alternative, more established approaches in the social sciences.  In turn, EP had a strong appeal for the mass media by providing ‘good stories’ about science, which (like much social science research) were seen as intuitively interesting and easy to understand, as well as congruent with broader debates of the time in the UK about sexuality, gender, politics and developments in the biosciences.  Following this work, I have an ongoing interest in communication of the social sciences and humanities: an activity often seen as easy but which can be quite difficult, and one which academics outside of the natural sciences tend not to prioritise.

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