STS academic staff

Professor Jon Agar
Professor of Science and Technology Studies

Professor Agar researches and writes on the history of modern science and technology. 

Professor Chiara Ambrosio
Deputy Head of Department & Professor of History and Philosophy of Science

Professor Ambrosio is an expert on the interrelations between science, art, and philosophy. Her research focuses on representations across art and science, nineteenth and twentieth century visual culture, the relations between classical Pragmatism and science, and the philosophy of Charles S. Peirce.

Professor Brian Balmer
Professor of Science Policy Studies

Professor Balmer has broad research interests in science and technology policy, particularly in relation to the life sciences.   His work combines sociological and historical approaches to understanding the nature of scientific expertise and science advice in policy contexts.  He has published extensively on the history and sociology of biological and chemical arms control.  His other research interests include scientific migration (the ‘brain drain’), the role of volunteers in biomedical research, and the sociology of secrecy.

Dr Timothy Boon 
Associate Professor in the Material and Public Cultures of Science

Dr Boon is a Professor of the Material and Public Culture of Science in the STS Department at UCL, with a career’s worth of curatorial and management experience at the Science Museum, London. Across my career, I have developed a distinctive academic expertise in the history of the public culture of science, manifested in the monograph Films of Fact: A History of Science in Documentary Films and (Wallflower: 2008), two co-edited collections (Material Culture and Electronic Sound (2013) and Understanding Use (2024) (both for the ‘Artefacts’ series from Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press).

Dr Jenny Bulstrode
Lecturer in History of Science and Technology

Dr Bulstrode is a historian of physical sciences, industry, techniques and materials, with particular interest in cross-cultural encounters in experiment and innovation.

Professor Joe Cain
Professor of History and Philosophy of Biology

Professor Cain’s research interests emphasise twentieth-century evolutionary studies, Darwin and Darwinism, exploration and empire, the history of natural history and museum, and science in London. 

Dr Saheli Datta Burton
Lecturer in Science Policy (Responsible Research and Innovation)

Dr Datta Burton’s research focuses on the (trans)national governance of emerging technologies with a focus on data-driven health and digital technologies.
 

Professor Emily Dawson
Professor of Education, Science and Society

Professor Dawson’s research examines relationships between social justice and science when it becomes ‘public’, whether in museums, schools and universities, activism, the mass media and people’s everyday lives.

UCL Profiles
Personal site

sts@ucl.ac.uk

Dr Theo Di Castri
Associate Lecturer (Teaching) in History of Modern Science

Dr Di Castri is a historian of the recent social sciences with a transnational focus on the Americas and an experimental educator with an action-research practice in Mexico and the UK.

Dr Karl Dudman
Lecturer in Nature, Environment and Society

Dr Karl Dudman is a Lecturer in Nature, Environment, and Society at UCL STS. With a background in anthropology and environmental governance, I use ethnographic and qualitative methods to explore cases of public non-participation in climate action. In particular, I am interested in the concepts of climate denialism, post-truth, or right wing populism, and how they have shaped the politics of climate change in the last decade

UCL Profiles

karl.dudman.12@ucl.ac.uk

Professor Carina Fearnley
Professor of Science Communication and Warning Research, and Director of the UCL Warning Research Centre 

Professor Fearnley is an interdisciplinary expert in public engagement, focusing on scientific uncertainty and risk, and its communication. Her research focuses on warning systems for hazards and threats, and art/science collaborations. 

Professor Jean-Baptiste Gouyon
Head of Department & Professor of Science Communication

As a researcher, Professor Gouyon’s investigates the history of the presentation of science in visual media. More broadly he is also interested in the sociology and history of the life sciences and the human animal relationship. He publishes on science museum displays, the history of British science television, and on the history of wildlife film and TV in Britain. He is the author of BBC Wildlife Documentaries in Age of Attenborough (2019).

As a teacher, Professor Gouyon runs courses in science communication. He is currently delivering STS courses on Science journalism. He supervises dissertations at all level on any aspect of science communication.

Professor Andrew Gregory
Professor of History and Philosophy of Science

Professor Gregory focuses his research on the history of science in the ancient world, especially the history of cosmology and the relations between magic and science.  

Dr Stephen Hughes

Lecturer in Science, Technology and Society 

Dr Hughes is an expert in science communication and responsible innovation. His work explores emotions at the intersections of science, technology, and society.

Professor Phyllis Illari
Professor of Philosophy of Science

Prof Illari is an expert in the philosophy of science, with research interests in causality and the philosophy of information.

Professor Frank A.J.L. James
Professor of History of Science

Research interests centre on the physical sciences, their social and cultural settings between roughly 1780 and 1850 and on the post-1945 cultural debates and the role of science and history of science (he welcomes expressions of interest from potential students in these areas). Currently focussing on Humphry Davy and his contexts, he edited the Correspondence of Michael Faraday.

Dr Rory Jubber

Lecturer in Philosophy of Science

Dr Jubber works primarily in the metaphysics of science with a particular focus on properties, composition and the laws of nature. In addition, Dr Jubber is interested in the nature of scientific testimony and the relation between political philosophy, ethics and other areas of philosophy. 
Outside of academic philosophy Dr Jubber takes an active interest in the political landscape of Southern Africa. 
 

Professor Simon Jay Lock
Professor of Science, Politics and Culture

Prof Lock’s research interests are centred around the relationship between science and public,the development of science communication, and public engagement with science and technology. 

Professor Tiago Mata
Professor of Science and Technology Studies

Dr Mata is an expert in the history and sociology of economics and political science.

Dr Joanna Octavia
Associate Lecturer (Teaching) in Science and Technology Policy

Dr Joanna Octavia’s research explores the changing nature of work in the digital age, alongside the governance and broader societal impacts of emerging technologies in the Global South. 

Dr Cian O’Donovan
Director of the UCL Centre for Responsible Innovation. Lecturer in Responsible Innovation

Dr. Cian O’Donovan is an expert in the politics of technology and responsible innovation

Dr Maryam Rokhideh
Post-Doctoral Research Fellow UCL Warning Research Centre

Maryam is an expert in risk communication and public engagement, especially in crisis contexts. Her research examines how communities and governments deal with ongoing and emerging threats, including conflict, climate change, health emergencies, and social and technological change.

Dr Helene Scott-Fordsmand
Lecturer in Medicine, Health and Society

Dr Scott-Fordsmand has a background in philosophy – analytic and continental – but works interdisciplinarity, drawing especially on ethnographic methods. Her research centres on questions in the epistemology of medical practice, the medical body, and on unruly elements of enquiry more broadly, as well as on questions of the use of empirical methods in philosophy. She holds a PhD from a university museum (Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen), and values collaborations with creative practitioners and museum professionals as a core part of her research.

 

Professor Melanie Smallman
Professor of Science and Technology Studies

Prof Smallman is an expert on science communication and policy, especially in the area of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI).

Dr Erman Sözüdoğru
Lecturer in Philosophy of Science and Medicine

Dr Erman Sozudogru is an interdisciplinary researcher in philosophy of science with a background in pharmaceutical chemistry. Erman combines philosophy of science and science and technology studies approaches in addressing epistemic and practical questions regarding scientific inquiry. In his PhD thesis, Erman focused on understanding how the broader socioeconomic and political context of Neglected Tropical Diseases shape the scientific practices employed to eliminate these diseases. Erman’s research focuses on understanding the scientific inquiry in its broader policy context.

Professor Jack Stilgoe
Professor of Science and Technology Policy 

Prof Stilgoe is an expert in the governance of emerging technologies.

Professor Emma Tobin
Professor of Philosophy of Science

Dr Tobin is an expert in the philosophy of science; metaphysics of science and philosophy of science in practice. She is particularly interested in the philosophy of biochemistry.

Dr Cristiano Turbil
Associate Professor in History of Medicine

Dr Cristiano Turbil’s research explores the relationship between medicine, politics and national identity in modern Europe; he has written on the history of health & science communication; the history of public health in modern Italy, and literature and science.  

Dr Michel Wahome
Lecturer in Science, Technology and Society

Dr. Wahome’s research examines technological and scientific knowledge production in Africa

Professor Simon Werrett
Professor of History and Philosophy of Science

Prof Werrett is an expert in history of early modern and Enlightenment Science, especially in Europe and Russia.