Themes

Special Themes:

  • Educating social scientists today.
  • Social sciences in the universities under transformation.
  • Social sciences/humanities/natural sciences: new rules of delimitation.
  • Social problems and social issues in postmodernity: the end of social theory?

Theme 1: The Social Impacts of Science

  • Applied and basic science: what are the connections?
  • From science to technology: concepts, methods, practices.
  • Design practices: putting science to work.
  • Science in the service of the social: the processes of problem definition and problem solving.
  • Science that changes the world: how do we address the key challenges of our times - sustainability, climate change, health, poverty?
  • Social-systematic biases in science? Gender, class, race, ethnicity and disability in science.
  • The natural-physical and the social: what is the distinction?

Theme 2: The Values, Ethos and Ethics of Science

  • What are the core values of science?
  • Socially engaged, responsible, accountable science.
  • The ethics of science and the values of scientists.
  • Academic freedom, research integrity and social responsibility.
  • Specific ethical issues: bioethics, medical ethics, environmental ethics.
  • Human and animal subjects in scientific research.
  • Science and religion.
  • Diversity in science: negotiating paradigms and ideological divergence.

Theme 3: The Pedagogies of Science

  • Science at school: how children learn the values, practices and content knowledge of science.
  • Education and miseducation: controversies and ‘balance’ in science curricula.
  • Science apprenticeships: technical, professional, university and postgraduate education in science.
  • Community education in science: connecting lay and expert discourses through the media, museums and the public culture.
  • Science learning and teaching in popular media.

Theme 4: The Knowledge Systems of Science

  • Social perspective and objectivity in science.
  • Communicating discovery: publishing in the scientific community.
  • The social moderation and validation of science: changing systems and processes of peer review.
  • The globalisation of science.
  • Scientific paradigms and social ideologies.
  • Indigenous, traditional and popular science.
  • The social in science work: teams, collaborations, disciplinary and cross-disciplinary groupings.
  • Sites of scientific work: new and emerging sites of knowledge production.
  • Modes of knowledge dissemination: traditional, electronic and open access publication channels.
  • Modes of knowledge synthesis: data mining, disaggregation and reaggregation.
  • User-focused science and participatory research.
  • Interdisciplinary practices across social and physical sciences.

Theme 5: The Politics of Science

  • Government in science: policy, politics, lobbying, funding.
  • Public accountability for science: why, how and to what effect?
  • Who are the stakeholders of science?
  • Public communication of science.
  • Science and ‘controversy’: politics and ideology in ‘truth’ claims.

Theme 6: The Economics of Science

  • Returns on public investment in science.
  • Science in the ‘knowledge economy’.
  • Science and ‘innovation’.
  • National competitiveness and scientific league tables.
  • Measuring scientific outputs.
  • Selling science: markets for scientific knowledge.
  • Private science: science as a business.
  • Intellectual capital: measuring the value of science.