UCL Department of Science and Technology Studies

2011. Dr Joe Cain

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In 2009, Cain’s research on Darwin took several directions. First, it focused on Darwin’s research into the evolution of emotional expression and its relevance to the descent of man. This led to a new edition of Darwin’s Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals for Penguin Classics, with a scholarly introduction and a bibliographic essay by Cain (Cain and Messenger 2009). This Penguin Classics edition has world-wide distribution. Research materials also were translated into a series of products for general audiences. The keystone was an exhibition, “Darwin’s in the Hospital,” for UCH creating 12 exhibition panels over three floors of the hospital. This exhibition ran for approximately one year. Extension materials were created as print and online resources, podcasts, and an article in the popular history magazine, Wellcome History. The most wide-reaching tool for dissemination was a set of five postcards illustrating the visual rhetoric of Darwin’s work on expression. I am told more than 10,000 were distributed, mostly by Wellcome Library as a collaborative venture.

In addition, in 2009-10 Cain delivered at least 15 public lectures on Darwin and the relevance of this work to general audiences. Most focused on the theme, “what does it mean to be human”. These were delivered mainly through the network of University of the Third Age and similar local community groups across SE England. Audiences averaged approximately 150 and ranged from 25 to 350. In addition, Cain led four Cafe Scientifiques, including one, through the British Academy via video conference, in Croatia. Most included extended discussions, and in more than a dozen cases, Cain received requests to return to lecture on other topics. In addition, Cain developed a “Darwin Quiz” event used as a quiz night in five settings for small groups, chiefly student societies outside traditional curriculum. The project as a whole was done in collaboration with Dr Sharon Messenger and Dr Carole Reeves.

Research in this project led to Cain’s inclusion onto the Advisory Board for the Likeness and Facial Recognition Research Network, an AHRC funded research network directed by Dr Emma Chambers (2011). The chief result of this project is a series of the interdisciplinary, multi-institution workshops during February-April 2011. Cain also was invited to serve on the advisory board for “Revisiting Galton,” an interdisciplinary artist project organised by Simon Gould for UCL Museums and Collections, with exhibitions in 2010-11.

Largely for these Darwin-related activities, Cain received an honourable mention in the 2010 Provost's Awards for Public Engagement.

Related publications

Cain, Joe, and Sharon Messenger, eds. 2009. Charles Darwin. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. 2nd edition, Penguin Classics. London: Penguin.

Cain, Joe, Messenger, Sharon, and Reeves, Carole. 2009. “Darwin’s in the Hospital,”
<www.ucl.ac.uk/histmed/darwin>.

Chamber, Emma. 2011. Likeness and Facial Recognition Research Network
<www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/research/likeness-project>

2011. Dr Joe Cain

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Cain (2001) was an essay on the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial and its relevance to current discussions about anti-evolutionism in America. The goal was to focus attention on wider antagonisms in culture, such as modernism vs. traditionalism. This produced invitations to deliver the seventh annual Robert Edmond Grant Lecture (2003) for the Grant Museum of Zoology and to provide the keynote lecture in the Linnean Society of London’s 2004 Conversazione. The latter was also a simulcast and available as an online videocast through the Natural History Museum, London. These activities were picked up elsewhere. I was asked to convert my original essay into a format more suitable for wider distribution (Cain 2007), and I was invited to engage general audiences in SE England and the US. Of these, the most notable was a public lecture at the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History in Oklahoma, USA in 2009 to a standing room only audience of over 400 and an especially thoughtful discussion afterwards with the audience. (At that meeting, I was accused of being a Quaker. I’m still not sure what the person intended by this.) The organiser of the series later won a university-level engagement award for the programme in which my talk was a part. The decision to publish Cain (2009) was taken to help modernist audiences appreciate some of the themes shaping traditionalist concerns over science.

My 2009 activity produced an invitation from the organisers of the “symposium” series at the Old Vic Theatre in London to write, direct, and participate in a 15-minute vignette on the issues for a young audience programme supporting the theatre’s production of Inherit the Wind. This was a one-off event to a full house, completed in collaboration with playwrite and our former MSc student, Emily Steel, among others. Publicity from the Old Vic performance led to an invitation to be the subject for one of UCL media’s prototype mini-lecture videocasts for the UCL Website. The result, “Is Science Always Good” video through UCL media, helped prove the viability of the concept for UCL Media Relations. As part of promoting the conversations of this work, I also have organised several screenings and discussion events, roughly once every three years, for the 1960 film “Inherit the Wind,” most recently in the 2011 “natural changes” season in the ‘Film Nights at the Grant Museum’ series.

Related publications

Cain, Joe. 2001. Scopes Trial and Fundamentalism in the United States. Macmillan Publishers Ltd, Nature Publishing Group. Available from www.els.net.

Cain, Joe. 2007. Rethinking Attacks on Evolution. Lessons from the 1925 Scopes Trial. In Philosophy of Biology. 2nd edition, edited by M. Ruse. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.

Cain, Joe, ed. 2009. William Jennings Bryan’s Last Message: a reprint of his famous closing arguments for the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, undelivered and posthumously published. London: Euston Grove Press.

Michela Massimi's research in philosophy of physics has led to engagement with the academic community beyond philosophy, and with a wider public audience.

In November 2007, she was invited to deliver an introductory talk for the general public at the Dana Centre, Science Museum, in London (November 2007). The event was on the theme of time, and was organised to accompany the work "In my own time" of the Irish artist Grace Weir. This was a solo exhibition, developed with the Science Museum Arts Projects. Michela was the invited philosopher, and Marcus Chown was the invited scientist, both commenting on the asymmetry of time from a philosophical and physical perspectives as a commentary of Grace Weir's four new films on time. The event was attended by over 50 people.

Michela Massimi's work on Pauli's exclusion principle has not been confined to the  philosophy community, and she has been keen to make sure practicing scientists engage with her work.   For example, she was invited to be part of the International Advisory Committee for the 2008 conference “Theoretical and experimental aspects of the spin-statistics connection and related symmetries”, organised by the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN), Trieste, Italy. As part of the international conference, Michela delivered a talk open to the general public on the relevance of the Pauli principle for the history and philosophy of physics.

Her more recent work on Kant's philosophy of nature was presented at the annual meeting of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft in Bonn in March 2010. The conference is the biggest German gathering of the Physical Society, runs through a week with a rich program covering various branches of physics. The talk was presented in the HPS session of the event and was attended by around 50 people drawn both from general public and from the physics community.

What if as we travel we could call up a mobile phone application that could tell us about the hidden history of communications around us?

Jon Agar has recently been successful in bidding to the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for a collaborative project called Locating Communications Heritage, aimed to test the potential of making the history of communications and relevant information technologies available to users of mobile phones, making full locatability of new devices.

We started with a challenge: what if as we travel we could call up a mobile application that could tell us about the hidden history of communications around us, connecting us not only to scholarship but also to objects and documentary sources that told stories? Could we also find ways of tapping personal stories of historical sites and objects that would feedback and inform experts?

In this pilot project, object and history, place and people might be brought together. The aim was to produce a working prototype so that the potential of citizen mobile in the cause of historical interpretation and museological experiment could be explored. Locating Communications Heritage was a collaborative project between Jon Agar (an academic historian of science and technology), the curator of computing an information at the Science Museum, and commercial partners, British Telecom and Illumina Digital. We sought to understand what needed to be accomplished to make the mobile application described above possible.In the course of the year long project, sites and sources relating to the history of communications in Greater London were researched and described.  Proposals for the architecture of the pilot application were tested against audience expectations. The application, “Hidden History”, which ran on the iPhone, was designed, built, tested and evaluated.

All partners contributed and took away valuable lessons. The Science Museum conducted audience research, which will help guide future mobile projects connected with the design of the major upcoming permanent gallery on the history of communications. Illumina Digital have subsequently explored and launched further projects for mobile users.

Impact

Advancing knowledge

• Increased understanding of the changing role of the museological artefact, both physical and virtual.
• Opportunity to explore the dichotomy between curators as facilitators of dialogue and curators as holders of expertise.

Advancing knowledge and understanding of digital heritage

• A material contribution to bridging the divide between the lay person in the street and science & technology objects and archives ‘hidden’ in repositories, using digital technology that is intended ultimately to be available to anyone with a smart device.
• A confirmation of belief that location based heritage content is important, is becoming a commercially viable area of research and that there are identifiable models for bringing products to market.
• Improved knowledge of audience expectations in a rapidly changing

Perspectives from the project partners

Jon Agar and the Department of Science and Technology Studies, UCL

• The experience of teamwork aimed at an outcome that was unconventional for an academic (ie not an academic paper or book, but a mobile phone app) was transformative. Working closely with designers, curators, programmersand other experts to make the app was revelatory.

The Science Museum

• The project has been central to our strategic aim to develop a major new, permanent, object-rich gallery (and associated products) around the history of communications, provisionally titled Making Modern Communications.
• The project has developed our understanding of whether history can be usefully illuminated by place and whether audiences are more likely to connect with scientific and technical history, if they know a location.
• The project shifted our interpretation focus from object-centric to story-centric points of interest. This was a challenging but important development for the app and beyond, and feeds directly into Science Museum research on new ways of creating compelling narratives and engagement around museum collections.

BT Archives

• Participation in this project has been a great fit with one of our strategic aims to widen access to BT’s heritage, and raise awareness of the role of BT and its predecessors in the development of communicationstechnology.
• Drawing on academic expertise from the Science Museum and UCL has contextualised the value and significance of our heritage within the wider science and technology domain.
• Benefiting from the creative technical know-how of Illumina Digital and the Science Museum has opened up our heritage collection to a wider potential audience than through previous channels, including ‘traditional’ online.

Andrew Chitty and Illumina Digital

• Demonstration of a working prototype has allowed Illumina to engage in dialogue with further heritage, archives and local based content partners e.g. City of Bath UNESCO World Heritage Group, Bath and North East Somerset District Council and its seven museums, digital design studio Glasgow School of Art and Visit Scotland.
• The project has also encouraged us to develop a simple authoring environment for geolocated content on the Android platform.

Participants and trainers, ESconet Workshop Dubrovnik 2010

Science in Public: communication, culture and credibility
The book Science in Public: communication, culture and credibility by Jane Gregory and Steve Miller made a considerable and unifying impact on the disparate academic community concerned with current and past relations between science and society. This includes research publications citing the work, as well as researchers influenced by conference presentations.

The expertise of the authors has been called upon widely. Dr Jane Gregory sat on the advisory panel for the Copus science communication grants award scheme (2000–2004) and on the advisory panel for the Government’s Sciencewise public engagement programme (2004–2006). Professor Steve Miller was a member of PPARC’s Science and Society Advisory Panel (1996-2005), co-coordinates outreach and dissemination activities for Europlanet, and sits on the Scientific Committee of the international Public Communication of Science and Technology Network.

Here, we highlight three major impacts that go well beyond the immediate academic community:

ESConet training network (2000-present)

The European Science Communication network is the third generation of activity based on this research funded by the European Commission’s Framework programmes. ESConet is directed by Miller and hosted in UCL’s Department of Science and Technology Studies. Previous phases of ESConet developed teaching materials for masters’ programmes in science/society relations and produced a suite of science communication training workshops aimed at genuine engagement with public concerns. ESConet is contracted by the Commission to train Europe’s leading researchers to communicate effectively. In 2009, 160 senior researchers and outreach personnel were trained; in 2010, another 200+ will be trained. This work is thus making a major impact on the ability of Europe’s scientific community to communicate with policy makers, media professionals and European citizens. It is funded by a €527,000 FP7 grant.

European Commission benchmarking programme (2001-2003)

As part of the 2001 Lisbon Agreement to establish the European Research Area, the EC set up a series of five benchmarking activities, to compare Member States and highlight examples of good practice for others to follow. Miller chaired the working group benchmarking the promotion of RTD culture and public understanding fo science. Its report, presented at a conference held under the Greek presidency, had considerable influence on the development of EC policy in this area.

RSA Science, Citizenship and the Market Project (2002–2005)

This collaborative project with the Royal Society of Arts and STS (Gregory, Lock), and members of science-based businesses from the RSA’s Fellowship, began by disseminating research into science communication and public engagement already undertaken by UCL. It continued with a series of topic-based meetings of Forum members, science communication and public engagement practitioners, policy-makers and academics, exploring topics including the media, risk, the public, regulation and transparency. These led to the creation of the RSA Forum for Technology Citizens and the Market. The Forum brought together UK based companies (e.g. Nirex, Pfizer, AEA Technology, Qinetiq) associated with potentially controversial science/technology to discuss the social problems of introducing new technologies. The only such study with a business focus, the Forum held lectures, seminars and open working groups. The Forum developed a web-based tool that enables businesses to develop skills to build public engagement, and feed its outputs into business practice.

Relevant websites

• UCL-RSA Forum Guidance for Science-based Business on Engaging the Public www.thersa.org
  
• ESConet science communication training network www.esconet.org.

Since 1994, Brian Balmer has been researching the history of the UK biological and chemical warfare programmes. The work, largely based on archival research in the National Archives, has been facilitated by an unprecedented release of formerly classified documents over the past decade. Brian has published widely on this topic in academic journals and edited collections, most notably in his 2001 monograph Britain and Biological Warfare.

He has given over 25 interviews on local, national and international TV and Radio on aspects of the history of biological and chemical weapons, including BBC TV, Radio 4, ITV and Channel 5. The interviews have ranged from short news items to documentaries. Notably, in 2006, he was interviewed for ‘The Living Weapon,’ a documentary broadcast the following year in the USA by the PBS. The programme won a 2008 News & Documentary Emmy for ‘outstanding science, technology and nature programming’. In the last year, Brian has given interviews about past biological weapons programmes to BBC Radio 5 Live’s ‘Drivetime’ show, BBC TV Bristol’s ‘Points West’, Radio 4fm Ireland, the BBC One Show and the the Guardian. Behind the scenes, he has been a historical consultant for the ITV drama series ‘Foyles War’ when they filmed an episode involving anthrax, for an article on the Channel 4 web-site, and for the BBC’s ‘One Show’.

This research fed directly into an arts project, ‘Dark Spaces’, which explored hidden sites of scientific research in the UK. Dark Spaces was produced by the artist Neal White and the Office of Experiments. It involved various activities such as compiling the Overt Research Database, “an ongoing project to map and record advanced labs and facilities in the UK, and to involve the public in this exploration and revelation”. The South Edition of the database was presented as part of the exhibition Dark Places at the John Hansard Gallery, Southampton (2009-2010), in partnership with Arts Catalyst and SCAN. This year, I have also provided advice to the Science Museum and the Wellcome Trust about planned exhibitions related to the history of chemical and biological warfare.

Working on the history of chemical and biological warfare can aid current attempts to control the spread of such weapons. In the course of this work, many policy-makers have told Brian that it is essential to understand the hidden past in this area in order to understand the present. For example, he has presented his work to groups of stakeholders at the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (1998, 2003, 2006) and to trainee UN weapons inspectors (2001). He has recently been working with Dr Caitriona McLeish of Sussex University on a case study of the history of nerve gas. This is part of a project on the governance of dual-use technologies – mostly focusing on current and emerging technologies – sponsored by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the US Defence Threat Reduction Agency. The project results are due to be published by MIT Press in a book edited by Dr Jonathan Tucker.

Brian is happy to talk about his work with a wider audience. He has given talks for schools, and more recently in October 2010 gave two talks entitled ‘Who’s Afraid of Biological Warfare?’ at a Science Museum Late event on the theme of bioterrorism.