Opportunities for PhD candidates in science communication!
Calling all PhD candidates with interests in science communication, history of science, history of medicine, (pop) cultural studies and popular entertainment studies. Dr Laura Dawes and Dr Anna-Sophie have developed three PhD projects, and offering these for prospective students. See below for information, and click through for more extensive details for each project.
Wondrous Science and (the Crisis of) Knowledge Credibility: Tracing the Links between Science, Spectacle and Wonder from the 19th Century to Today
This PhD project invites candidates to explore how 19th-century discourses of “wondrous science” – where scientific knowledge was staged, performed and entangled with magic, religion and spectacle – continue to shape contemporary narratives about science, credibility and public trust in research.
The research will critically examine how these enduring tropes influence current debates around scientific authority and the crisis of knowledge credibility. How do legacies of science 'on show' contribute to both science enchantment and skepticism? What 'spectacular' rhetorical and aesthetic strategies are used to bolster or undermine scientific credibility, and to fuel or dampen fascination with science today? And how are the historical modes of staging science echoed in popular culture – from films and streaming series to comics – where science is often dramatised, mythologised or contested?
Birth Beyond the Body: Science Fiction, Public Narratives and the Communication of Artificial Womb Technology
Pre-mature birth is one of the leading causes of infant death. Since the late 19th century, people have sought to develop medical technologies that could allow babies born before the full 37-41 week gestation period to survive. Success in inventing incubators and other life support systems have allowed the downward extension of viability, but which seem to have reached a floor of around 22 weeks below which a neonate’s lungs were too little developed to survive outside of its mother’s body.
This project investigates the medical history and pop culture communication of artificial wombs and neonatal incubators. How have these developed over time and for what reasons? How do cultural representations make sense and use of these technologies? Do neonatal life support technologies alter how parents connect with their new born? How does how we communicate about these technologies affect our concepts of birth and parenthood?
Click here for more information.
Revived: Technologies of resuscitation and their portrayal in popular culture
Dying is a fundamental part of the human condition, but humans have long felt the need to try to stay or postpone death’s hand. Techniques and technologies of resuscitation have, since the 18th century, sought to marshal science to achieve ultimate control: bring someone back from the dead. In popular culture – from TV medical dramas to modern gothic film – dying and revival is a key device serving narrative interests, pumping up dramatic potential and deepening significance by posing existential questions.
This project investigates the medical understanding and technologies of resuscitation and how these are communicated in popular culture. What is the connection between the science of resuscitation and how it appears in our cultural entertainments?