Workshop Programme
Thursday 11 March
1030 Bus pick-up from Oxford Station
1100 - 1130 Registration and coffee (Malthouse)
1130 - 1300 Theme 1- Learning about Connoisseurship and other Intermediary Forms (Malthouse)
What can we learn from other domains, or from institutional intermediaries in S&T, about
- purposes of connoisseurship;
- roles and styles of mediation;
- sources of legitimacy and authority, construction of evidence and argument;
- the identification and management of conflicts of interest
How does our more general understanding of different forms of expertise help us to interrogate and position connoisseurship?
1300 - 1400 Lunch (The Old Swan)
1400 - 1530Theme 2 session 1 – Defining Opportunities for Scientific Connoisseurship
What can we learn about the history of scientific connoisseurship?
What are the current problems of science and society to which scientific connoisseurship is seen as a contributory solution?
How are these distinctive of our scientific culture and our times?
Does the agenda for scientific connoisseurship look different in a globalised world with a division of labour in knowledge production?
How can we recognise scientific connoisseurship in action, and how do we deal with potentially conflicting roles that we might demand of it? What might be the unintended social consequences?
1530 - 1630 Tea and coffee – pick up room keys
1630 - 1800 Theme 2 session 2 - Defining Opportunities for Scientific Connoisseurship
What are the principal forms of scientific connoisseurship and what do we understand about popular or professional scientific connoisseurship?
How is scientific connoisseurship socially constructed – or limited?
What sort of contributions can we expect from it – does it lead or lag behind social debate on the issues or redefined issues? Does it have an anticipatory role in relation discontinuities of subject and method?
In these respects how does it relate to other forms of mediation between science and its publics /different stakeholders in science and technology? In particular, what relation does it have to the broader participation of the public with S&T, and to the development and delivery of public policy?
1845 -1930 Pre-dinner drinks (Bar area, the Old Swan)
1930 - 2100 Dinner (The Old Swan)
Friday 12 March
0800 - 0900 Breakfast (The Old Swan)
0930 - 1100 Theme 3 session 1 - Supporting and Assessing Change
What base of knowledge and experience would scientific connoisseurship draw on/need to build? Is there a particular role for the sociology of scientific knowledge? How far is scientific connoisseurship a broad set of roles, and how far a putative social technology, supporting the ‘co-evolution’ of science and society? What can we learn from existing forms and approaches, such as constructive technology assessment, or the ‘anticipatory research’ of the NEST insight projects?
1100 - 1130 Coffee and tea
1130 - 1300 Theme 3 session 2- Supporting and Assessing Change
What do the different forms of scientific connoisseurship suggest for educational curricula? How far do educational changes already under development – such as those in the new science and citizenship curricula – contribute to scientific connoisseurship or other forms of public engagement with science and technology?
What would be the characteristics of a supportive social environment in which experimentation and learning in scientific connoisseurship could take place with a range of social partners, and how could this be developed and financed? Would this take institutional form, or have more the character of a social network? How would this relate to, or supercede, traditional models of scientific communication?
1300 - 1400 Lunch (The Old Swan)
1400 - 1500 Next steps: Developing, publishing and experimenting with the workshop’s ideas.
1500 - 1545 Coffee and tea
1600 Bus departs for Oxford station
