Dr Jack Stilgoe
ESRC
Postdoctoral research fellow
From Feb 2005, Jack will be working as a researcher at Demos . You can send him an email using his new address.
Research Interests
Sociology of Scientific Knowledge,
Politics of expert advice,
Public understanding of science,
Sociology of health and illness
Doctoral Research - UCL STS (2000-2003)
"Experts and Anecdotes - Shaping the public science of mobile phone risks"
My PhD thesis (submitted December 2003, examined June 2004) was the result of three years spent spent in the company of the recent mobile phones health controversy. I spoke to the research scientists whose work contributed answers to the question of mobile phone safety and I spoke to advisory scientists who had been charged with understanding the issue and suggesting policy. My thesis tells the story of changing advice about mobile phone risks, and the roles played by experts and non-experts in setting the agenda for credible public science. The thesis also contains a large section which unpicks the term 'anecdotal evidence', traditionally ignored in expert circles.
I am in the process of dissecting this research into papers for publication.
View thesis' abstract/table of contents...
Postdoctoral
Research
My postdoctoral fellowship, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, continues my PhD research, following the developments of the mobile phones controversy as advisory scientists strive for some sort of stability and research scientists continue to work on projects which address areas of concern.
I am also focusing on a contested illness that has emerged within and around the mobile phones controversy. 'Electrosensitivity', or 'Electrical/Electromagnetic hypersensitivity' (ES) is a claimed reaction to weak electromagnetic fields, producing any number of symptoms.
My project aims to put this illness in social and political context, looking especially at the views held by scientists in the Uk and in Sweden, where ES is more readily-accepted as 'real'.
If you are interested in my research, or involved in research in the same area, please get in touch with me by email.
Background
My first degree was in Economics at Manchester University, where I first began to realise the extent to which a veil of certainty created by science (in this case the self-professed 'hard' social science) could disguise its imperfections. Interested by this, and with a desire to fuel a life-long passion for all things scientific, I decided to explore the world of science studies. I went on to take an MSc at PREST in Manchester, where my dissertation was on the role of the media in the construction of mobile phone health risks (Click here to see a discussion paper adapted from my dissertation).
Publications/Presentations:
"Constructing public engagement in the science of mobile phone risk", Proceedings of the fifth Wireless World conference, University of Surrey, 15th/16th July 2004
"Constructing Uncertainty and Public Concern About Mobile Phones", Paper presented at the London Public Understanding of Science Seminar Series, London School of Economics, 26th November 2003
"Experts and Anecdotes: Science and the Public in the UK Mobile Phones
Health Debate", paper presented at the August 2002 conference of
the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST),
York
· ...Also presented at the LSE Centre for the Analysis of Risk
and Regulation Graduate workshop, September 2002
"How anecdotal is anecdotal evidence? - the case of mobile phones
and health in the UK", paper presented at the 2002 Mephistos conference,
Blacksburg, Virginia
"Mobile Telephones" and "Catamarans": Contributions
to the Encyclopædia of 20th Century Technology, Fitzroy Dearborn,
in press
Book reviews in "Science and Public Policy":
1. "A reflexive turn in social science - review of 'Making
Social Science Matter', by Bent Flyvbjerg", SPP 29 (2)
2. Review of 'In
the Chamber of Risks', by William Leiss, SPP 30 (3)
3. Review of 'RSI
and the Experts', by Hilary Arksey, in press
Links
CBAS (The Centre for Bioscience and Society at UCL)
The Stewart Report - Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones
NRPB (National Radiological Protection Board) - The UK radiation regulation body
FEB (The Swedish Association for the ElectroSensitive)
