EGENIS Lecture: Finding and making spaces for interdisciplinary collaboration: From the laboratory to the garden (via the policy room and the art studio)

Working across disciplines can be challenging, particularly when these collaborations span the natural sciences, the social sciences, the arts, and the humanities. This makes it necessary to find – and make – spaces to come together. As a researcher in the field of science and technology studies (STS), I move through many different kinds of spaces. These can be welcoming, mundane, uncomfortable, or exclusionary. For example, in my social scientific investigation of the life sciences, I have spent time in equipment-laden laboratories, studios for biological art, glass-walled government meeting rooms, artisan coffee houses, and high-ceilinged libraries, collaborating variously with synthetic biologists, artists, policy makers, and philosophers. I have also tried to create new spaces for collaboration, often at the peripheries of formal events. More recently, I have found myself going outside, extending my research into the garden and interacting with pollinators, gardeners, and ecologists. In this talk, I journey through these different places, exploring their possibilities and constraints, and the opportunities they provide for making knowledge across and beyond disciplines.

Venue: Streatham Court, LT C

Online: via Zoom

Free to attend. Please Register here