The social study of science and medicine is a rapidly growing area in Australia and around the world. As the life sciences increasingly play a central role in contemporary societies, debates are emerging on how the biosciences are redefining society, politics, and legalities, including:
We explore these profound debates in the social study of science. Our aim is to bring researchers together to promote dialogue and collaboration and to give a greater profile to the field.
We run an extensive series of high-profile activities, including:
For a detailed list of upcoming events, please visit the University's What's On Calendar.
In times of shutdowns, cancelled events, and new routines of social distancing—we are much more in need of intimate intellectual exchange.
The BoS Labtalk reading group is therefore going online!
This year’s theme is called “Bodies and Entanglements” and you can find the schedule and more information here.
Wednesday 19 February 2020
Special event: The value(s) of precision medicine
Masterclass with Professor Barbara Prainsack
Exploring how precision medicine, with its programmatic focus on individual patients, could– perhaps counterintuitively – shed light on the substantive meaning of value in healthcare. For more information, contact: Associate Professor Sonja van Wichelen
2019 Lab Talk Reading Group
When: Mondays from 4-6pm
Venue: Meeting Room 370, Social Sciences Building (A02)
Visit the official website of Lab Talk for more information.
Friday 1 November 2019
Workshop: Humanity, identity and biopolitics in post-globalisation
We witness in the 21st century a backlash against global cosmopolitanism, cynicism about the efficacy of human rights, and a heightened interest in the project of national identities. How to understand these developments in a global and comparative perspective? What kind of conceptual tools are needed to understand the complexities and stakes involved? This symposium explores post-colonial biopolitics in an era of post-globalisation and new nationalisms.
13 June 2019
Book Seminar: The Oocyte Economy: The Changing Meaning of Human Eggs
Professor Catherine Waldby, Director of the Research School of Social Sciences, at the Australian National University will be presenting from her new book The Oocyte Economy: The Changing Meaning of Human Eggs which was just published with Duke University Press. In recent years increasing numbers of women from wealthy countries have turned to egg donation, egg freezing, and in vitro fertilization to become pregnant, especially later in life. This trend has created new ways of using, exchanging, and understanding oocytes—the reproductive cells specific to women. In The Oocyte Economy Catherine Waldby draws on 130 interviews — with scientists, clinicians, and women who have either donated or frozen their oocytes or received those of another woman —to trace how the history of human oocytes’ perceived value intersects with the biological and social life of women.
16 April 2019
Synthesizing Hope: A Special Lecture by Professor Anne Pollock
Anne Pollock, Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College, London, will be presenting her latest book Synthesizing Hope: Matter, Knowledge, and Place in South African Drug Discovery.
By analyseing iThemba Pharmaceuticals, a startup company in South African, from material and social perspectives, Professor Pollock explores how the location of scientific knowledge production matters in different ways, and challenges the limitations of the current global health frameworks.
23 November 2018
Masterclass: The microbiome revolution?
Microbiome research, the study of microbial communities in host organisms, is claimed to be ‘revolutionary’ science. But how true is this? In this masterclass, leading scholars in the field will review the research in human microbiome and examine its influences in human health, professional and social media.
27 August 2018 to 13 September 2018
Biolegality Pop-Up Research Lab
The Biopolitics of Science Research Network has been awarded funding for a Pop-Up Research Lab by Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre (SSSHARC). Explore the emerging issues in biolegality through a series of workshops, seminars, masterclasses and roundtables: