Currently, there are several scientists with public profiles who have taken the initiative to explicitly engage in advocacy (e.g. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein in physics and astronomy). Such advocacy work is often viewed as integral to, and perhaps inseparable from, their scientific work. This raises questions about science-society boundaries and relationships with respect to how scientists may contribute to pressing social issues, and the legitimacy and ‘objectivity’ of the scientific knowledge that they produce.

This project is an opportunity to examine the relationship between science and advocacy.

Through examining the research and public engagement of selected scientists, insights will be generated about how this relationship is imagined, practiced, justified and communicated. Potential topics of investigation could include (but are not limited to): how ‘good’ science is being (re)defined, undertaken and evaluated, similarities and differences between scientific disciplines, and the conditions under which the science-advocacy relationship may be viewed as illegitimate and transgressive (and why).