Globalization - Science in Society

// // Globalization +

Globalization

Regulatory practices and challenges of the African crop biotechnology sector	Principal	Team	Status
Building on a phase 2 project, this study examines current practices and emerging developments in the regulatory systems of crop biotechnology in African countries that have adopted GM technology in crops.	Dr Joanna Chataway Development Policy and Practice Technology Faculty The Open University Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA Tel. No.: +44 (0) 1908 655119/654782 Email: j.c.chataway@open.ac.uk	Professor David Wield Development Policy and Practice Technology Faculty The Open University Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA Tel. No.: + 44 (0) 1908 652475/653651 Email: d.v.wield@open.ac.uk Dr Seife Ayele Development Policy and Practice Technology Faculty The Open University Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA Tel. No.: +44 (0) 1908 655534/654782 Email: s.ayele@open.ac.uk	Ended August 2006


Institutional Impacts of North-South Partnerships in Agricultural Biotechnology	Principal	Team	Status
Agricultural biotechnology promises solutions to famine in developing countries. This study explored the processes involved in technology transfer through three in depth case studies involving African Partners.	Dr Joanna Chataway Development Policy and Practice Technology Faculty The Open University Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA j.c.chataway@open.ac.uk	Professor David Wield Development Policy and Practice Technology Faculty The Open University Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA d.v.wield@open.ac.uk Dr Helen Yanacopulos Development Policy and Practice Technology Faculty The Open University Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA h.yanacopulos@open.ac.uk Dr Seife Ayele Research Fellow Development Policy and Practice Technology Faculty The Open University Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA s.ayele@open.ac.uk	Ended August 2004


Childhood vaccination: science and public engagement in international perspective	Principal	Team	Status
The overall objective of the research was to develop comparative insights into science-society relations in European and African settings which have conventionally been theorised very differently, through the case of childhood vaccination research and regimes. This objective has been addressed in a preliminary way through drawing key comparative themes and insights from the country-specific analyses, as reported in section 4.3. This comparative work, which is necessarily at a broad level given the stark differences of context between Britain and West Africa, will continue in post-award analysis in engagement with wider literatures and be presented in full in the proposed book output from the research.	Professor James Fairhead Department of Anthroplogy University of Sussex Falmer Brighton BN1 9SJ j.r.fairhead@sussex.ac.uk	Professor Melissa Leach Institute of Development Studies University of Sussex Falmer Brighton BN1 9RE qdff6@central.susx.ac.uk	Ended September 2004


Science, Technology and Water Scarcity: Investigating the 'Solutions'	Principal	Team	Status
Water scarcity has emerged as a potential 'global crisis' with serious implications for food security, human health and social and economic development. The UN estimates that 2.7 billion people will face water scarcity by 2025. Against a growing alarmism around 'water wars', global and national agencies have been concerned with the causality and solutions to water scarcity. But what is scarcity? How has it been conceptualised? Does the way the ‘problem’ is constructed shape the ‘solutions’? Also do global or theoretical portrayals of scarcity match up to the way the issue is experienced locally and is there sometimes a disconnect between global and local ‘solutions’?	Dr Lyla Mehta, Environment Group, Institute of Development Studies, at the University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9RE l.mehta@ids.ac.uk		Ended November 2005


The World Wide Web of Science: Emerging Global Scources of Expertise	Principal	Team	Status
The Web has rapidly become a very widely used tool for seeking information, but we know very little about how – and what type of - information is found. To explore this question, we examined a particular group of people – academic researchers – and a set of topics that could be said to be of global interest, including HIV/Aids, climate change, terrorism, and internet and society. The central hypothesis to be examined was: does the ‘winner-take-all’ hypothesis apply to online resources? That is, is there a greater concentration – or a democratizing effect - of online as opposed to offline resources?	Dr Ralph Schroeder Oxford Internet Institute University of Oxford 1 St.Giles Oxford OX1 3JS Ralph.Schroeder@oii.ox.ac.uk	William Dutton Oxford Internet Institute University of Oxford 1 St.Giles Oxford OX1 3JS william.dutton@oii.ox.ac.uk	Ended March 2006


Databases, naturalists and the global biodiversity convention	Principal	Team	Status
This one-year project was carried out by social scientists at Lancaster University who wanted to understand the ways in which information and database technologies are designed and used to inform biodiversity polices in the UK and globally. It was funded under the ESRC’s Science and Society Programme.	Claire Waterton Department of Sociology County College South Lancaster University LA1 4YD c.waterton@lancs.ac.uk	Rebecca Ellis Department of Sociology County College South Lancaster University LA1 4YD r.ellis@lancaster.ac.uk Researcher Maria Pacha Department of Sociology County College South Lancaster University LA1 4YD m.pacha@lancaster.ac.uk	Ended June 2006