STS 502 Core Seminar in Science and Technology Studies
PHIL 561A Topics in Science and Technology Studies
January – April 2015
Mondays 2-5 pm

Professor Alan Richardson (Philosophy/STS)

TOPIC: Public Understanding of Science

This course will be a community-based learning course in which we bring readings on the public understanding of science to bear in places in the Vancouver area in which public presentation of science takes place. We will visit sites on UBC campus such as the Museum of Anthropology, the Beatty Biodiversity Museum, Project Seahorse, and “The Story of Medicines” exhibit at the Pharmacy Building; we will also visit Science World, Stanley Park’s nature conservancy people, and others. We will work with community partners in an effort to answer the question “What should the educated citizen in 2015 know about science, and how can STS scholars engage with public and private institutions to help them know it?” Readings from authors including Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch, Heather Douglas, Sheila Jasanoff, Bruno Latour, Naomi Oreskes, Robert Proctor, Steven Shapin, Alison Wylie, Brian Wynne.

This course is supported materially and conceptually by the UBC Centre for Community Engaged Learning.

Required Book

Richard Holliman, Elizabeth Whitelegg, Eileen Scanlon, Sam Smidt, and Jeff Thomas (eds.), Investigating Science Communication in the Information Age, Oxford University Press, 2009.