We address the social, ethical and legal questions arising from developments in health and biomedicine using a multidisciplinary research approach. To this end, we seek to influence the making of science and technology, of health policy and of regulatory practice in the public interest.
Publications
Activities
Biotechnology & Society Student Essay Contest June 2021
The Biotechnology & Society research group (BIOS) in the department of Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London invites submissions for a student essay contest on the topic: "In the future there will be no humans as we know them. So what?" Click the link to find out more.
Reproduction and resistance reading group
Women’s reproductive bodies have been at the frontline of various bio/necropolitical projects of liberal modernity, including capitalist industrialisation, colonial settlement, sustainable development and women’s emancipation. In our interdisciplinary reading group, we focus on questions related to the political, ethical, social and economic dimensions of reproduction. We reflect on what it means to make babies and families in the age of persistent racist and sexist attitudes, of climate change sceptics and a renewed tendency to control the population.
Themes
Beyond responsible research and innovation
Using an approach that does not uncritically accept the concept of RRI and seek to ‘employ’ it, but scrutinising the very assumptions and values that lead to the conceptualisation and enactment of responsibility in the research context. This research theme also links to questions about the value (and values) of science that are such a topical theme in politics at the moment.
Trust and trustworthiness
How do people trust science and technology? How can institutions and practices in science and technology enhance or assert their trustworthiness? How can researchers, increasingly required to collaborate across research fields, get to trust each other in the first place?
Reframing societal questions
The role of social science in reframing questions and providing answers (twisting the usual ‘speaking truth to power’ into ‘speaking power to truth’, in Nick Manning’s words). Critical social science research cannot suffice with providing answers to questions posted by funders and policy makers, but we need to scrutinise the assumptions that go into how questions are being posed (eg ‘nudging’ debate).
Cross-cutting theme: Local and global
Cutting across these topics, are the tensions between global and local, and within ‘global’ itself. Situatedness and multiculturalism are hallmarks of the research conducted by our members, and gives us, as a group, a unique potential for comparative and transnational inquiries, that can address the complex dynamics between local contexts and global politics in the production, circulation and transformation of bio-techno-scientific knowledge.
Publications
Activities
Biotechnology & Society Student Essay Contest June 2021
The Biotechnology & Society research group (BIOS) in the department of Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London invites submissions for a student essay contest on the topic: "In the future there will be no humans as we know them. So what?" Click the link to find out more.
Reproduction and resistance reading group
Women’s reproductive bodies have been at the frontline of various bio/necropolitical projects of liberal modernity, including capitalist industrialisation, colonial settlement, sustainable development and women’s emancipation. In our interdisciplinary reading group, we focus on questions related to the political, ethical, social and economic dimensions of reproduction. We reflect on what it means to make babies and families in the age of persistent racist and sexist attitudes, of climate change sceptics and a renewed tendency to control the population.
Themes
Beyond responsible research and innovation
Using an approach that does not uncritically accept the concept of RRI and seek to ‘employ’ it, but scrutinising the very assumptions and values that lead to the conceptualisation and enactment of responsibility in the research context. This research theme also links to questions about the value (and values) of science that are such a topical theme in politics at the moment.
Trust and trustworthiness
How do people trust science and technology? How can institutions and practices in science and technology enhance or assert their trustworthiness? How can researchers, increasingly required to collaborate across research fields, get to trust each other in the first place?
Reframing societal questions
The role of social science in reframing questions and providing answers (twisting the usual ‘speaking truth to power’ into ‘speaking power to truth’, in Nick Manning’s words). Critical social science research cannot suffice with providing answers to questions posted by funders and policy makers, but we need to scrutinise the assumptions that go into how questions are being posed (eg ‘nudging’ debate).
Cross-cutting theme: Local and global
Cutting across these topics, are the tensions between global and local, and within ‘global’ itself. Situatedness and multiculturalism are hallmarks of the research conducted by our members, and gives us, as a group, a unique potential for comparative and transnational inquiries, that can address the complex dynamics between local contexts and global politics in the production, circulation and transformation of bio-techno-scientific knowledge.