Science in Public 2017 will be hosted by the University of Sheffield, on the theme of  Science, Technology and Humanity. We look forward to seeing you there!

SCIENCE IN PUBLIC – A POTTED HISTORY

The first ‘Science and the Public’ conference was held in 2006 at Imperial College London (programme).  It was organised by Alice Bell and Sarah Davies, then PhD students at Imperial’s Science Communication group. It has since been hosted at universities throughout the UK, and has grown from a small postgraduate event into a full conference, attended by academics and practitioners working across the area from the UK and worldwide.

In 2012, we changed the name of the conference from ‘Science and the Public’ to ‘Science in Public’ after requests from delegates for many years. This reflects a general transition towards ideas about dialogue, engagement and interactive communication about science, and references Jane Gregory and Steven Miller’s Science in Public: Communication, Culture and Credibility (1998).

As well as the annual conference, SiP supports focused activities on an ad hoc basis, including the 2014 Environments in Public workshop at UEA, the 2015 PCST Summer School at UWE; and the 2017 STEM and Beyond? informal science learning workshop at Brunel University.

In 2016, the conference was hosted by the Centre for the History of the Sciences, University of Kent at Canterbury. You can find more details, including a full programme, here.

Archived information and links for all our previous conferences:

• 2015 – University of the West of England, Bristol (further details and programme).
• 2014 – University of East Anglia: Environment(s) in Public? workshop (programme).
• 2013 – University of Nottingham (programme and conference proceedings)
• 2012 – University College London (programme and abstracts)
• 2011 – University of Kingston (programme and abstracts)
• 2010 – Imperial College London (programme)
• 2009 – University of Brighton (programme)
• 2008 – University of Manchester (programme)
• 2007 – Imperial College London (programme)
• 2006 – Imperial College London (programme)