Dr Peter Winter and Dr Alan Chamberlain join Matimba Swana to explore elitism in research, the barriers to public engagement and why making research more inclusive and accessible is essential for meaningful community participation. Recorded 11 Oct 2024.
In this episode, we speak with Dr Peter Winter and Dr Alan Chamberlain about the world of public and community engagement with research, asking who truly gets to participate, and what structural barriers stand in the way. Pete is a Senior Research Associate and sociologist at the University of Bristol whose work focuses on sociotechnical systems and the societal impacts of AI, and Alan is a Principal Research Fellow at the Mixed Reality Lab at the University of Nottingham, whose research explores the creative and ethical applications of AI through Human-Computer Interaction. Together, we unpack the class dynamics embedded in academic culture and research engagement, from the dominance of middle and upper-class voices in academia, to the socioeconomic exclusion of working-class and marginalised communities from meaningful participation. We discuss what it means to truly listen to “unheard voices,” and why moving research from the ivory tower into the community is fundamental for equity and impact. This conversation centres the need for more inclusive, accessible, and democratic forms of research, and offers reflections on how we can begin to close the gap between academia and the public it seeks to serve. Referenced in the podcast:
● A project in 2015 “factors affecting public engagement by researchers ” suggested that public engagement is more embedded in the arts, humanities, and social sciences than in STEM.
● UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Hub assembles a team from the Universities of Southampton, Nottingham and King’s College London.
● Professor Kate Reed’s project Remembering Baby aimed to open up a conversation about the subject baby-loss.
● Wellcome changed their public engagement funding scheme for applications to support their new strategy.
● Andrew Crabtree was the Principle Investigator for Bridging the Rural Divide UKRI project
● The UKRI project Experiencing the Future Mundane was created in conjunction with the BBC R&D
● The NASSS (non-adoption, abandonment, scale-up, spread, sustainability) framework was developed to study technologies in real time in the real world. Trishia Greenhalgh’s paper - https://www.jmir.org/2017/11/e367/
● Dr. Jessica Morley is a postdoctoral associate at the Yale Digital Ethics Center, Yale University. These are links to her work - https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=hp-k6QwAAAAJ&hl=en
● University of Bristol public engagement team work to improve the impact of research by collaborating with communities in Bristol and beyond.
● Each year, Festival of Tomorrow shares the latest discoveries, research and developments from organisations and experts from Swindon, the UK and internationally.
● FUTURES is a free festival across venues in Bath, Bristol, Cornwall, Devon, Exeter and Plymouth. Past events include. Futures Up Late at the SS Great Britain.
