UCL-STS Seminar Series: Dr Jamie Lewis

About this event

The Department of Science & Technology Studies (STS) at UCL welcomes Dr Jamie Lewis from Cardiff University.

Bigfooters are amateur investigators devoted to finding evidence for the existence of Bigfoot, members of a relatively loosely bound epistemic community. Although they can be understood as being anti-establishment, to a greater or lesser degree in opposition to scientific institutions, they do not reject science as an idea. In fact, they are often self-consciously ‘scientific’, dedicating large parts of their lives to the collection and assessment of empirical evidence.

Many spend long periods - days, weekends, even weeks at a time -exploring the deep forests of North America. Equipped with a range of apparatus, including modern tools such as drones, LIDAR scanners, camera traps, sound recorders, and even home-made DNA collection kits, Bigfooters collect casts of footprints, photographs of possible nesting sites, hair samples, recordings of unexplained sounds, and so on. Their commitment to empiricism is an example of a distinctive, grassroots approach to knowledge-making. Based on 166 semi-structured interviews with Bigfooters and those interested in the phenomenon, this paper asks the questions: with what ‘model of science’ are Bigfooters working? How does this model legitimate their own epistemic practices, and their opposition to mainstream institutions of science?