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Tim Lewens' research into risk, trust and bioethics can be shown to have informed and influenced policy debate. This work has shaped reports of the Business Innovation and Skills working group on Science and Trust, and also reports from the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. Lewens' key contributions to the latter's Human Bodies Report have resulted in invitations to give evidence to the Welsh National Assembly, thus helping to shape the Assembly's drafting of its new bill on human transplantation. His work on the Council's report on Mitochondrial Disorders has been echoed in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority's (HFEA's) recent advice to UK Ministers, which aims to inform forthcoming debate to alter existing legislation on experimental mitochondrial therapies. Lewens' research has also led to his being asked to take on consulting roles to industry, most recently with AstraZeneca.
Public debate on the philosophical issues surrounding the nature of health and technological alteration of the human body has been informed and influenced by means of public events, media interviews and freely available online resources. These have informed both the general public and stakeholder groups, building on insights from research at UWE Bristol. Meacham has written for a general audience on the use of pharmaceutical enhancement in sports and education, influencing attitudes toward `doping' in these two spheres. Public debates (on eugenics and smart drugs) have impacted individual practice toward disabled people and attitudes of stakeholders toward the use of `smart drugs'. Meacham's interventions in the international press have been used as a model of effective communication by major trade unions.
This case study is based on research at the interface of computer science and biology, undertaken at MMU. Subsequent inter-disciplinary work was partly supported by the EPSRC Bridging the Gaps: NanoInfoBio project, and led to the creation of a new "citizen science" organization, which is now one of the leading groups of its type in the world. The specific impacts are (1) generation of revenue for a new business operation created as a result of the project, (2) the stimulation of and influence on policy debate, and (3) the stimulation of public interest and engagement in science and engineering.
The use of performance enhancing methods and substances, or `doping', has been the major ethical issue relating to elite sports for several decades. Prof McNamee has led internationally recognised research that has contributed significantly to national and international approaches to catch or deter athletes from doping. This has taken the form of research underpinning the development of UK wide approaches to anti-doping education for sportsmen and women, educational materials for sports physicians around the world, and significant influences on policy critique and development at the global level for both the International Cycling Union and the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA).
For over a decade, Professor Julian Savulescu has produced a body of work on the enhancement of human beings and its ethical implications, including work on the ethics of genetic selection and on the ethics of using technology to enhance human capacities. This work has had an influence on public policy, in particular by influencing government bodies in Norway, the United States, and Australia, and on business and industry. It has also been used in teaching material for secondary school pupils by the Wellcome Collection. Furthermore, through the many prestigious public lectures that Professor Savulescu has given and the seminars that he has led, through the television and radio interviews that he has given, and through the extensive discussion of his ideas in the press and online, he has both contributed to the public awareness of and stimulated lively debate around such issues as what distinguishes the use of doping in sport from seemingly acceptable forms of enhancement, and what if anything is wrong with designer babies.
A decade of social science research on emerging technologies carried out and/or directed by Oxford researchers at InSIS (Institute for Science, Innovation and Society) provided the basis for the Oxford Principles for the Governance of Geoengineering Research. These Principles were endorsed by the House of Commons Science and Technology (S&T) Committee in 2010 and were subsequently accepted by the UK Government in its official response to the Committee's report - meaning that appropriate governance arrangements are now a necessary precondition for responsible research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) of geoengineering. The Principles have also been "generally endorsed" by the international geoengineering research community in its efforts to ensure responsible conduct in the controversial emerging area of environmental technology.
John Dupré has been engaged in an intensive investigation of contemporary genomic science and its implications for policy, practice and public understanding. His research has been at the forefront of criticism of popular deterministic understandings of genetics, challenging public assumptions, and informing debates over the relevance of genomics/genetics to understandings of a wide range of issues of public concern, including health and illness, ideas of `human nature', `normality', and gender and `race', as well as philosophical issues like the possibility of free will. His research questioning both Darwin's idea of the `Tree of Life', and interpretations of human evolution in evolutionary psychology, has contributed to public discussion and understanding of evolution. In sum, Dupré's work has had an impact on media and public understandings of, and debates about, science, as well as on UK science policy.
Research at Bradford has focused on the Biological Non-Proliferation work of the Bradford Disarmament Research Centre (BDRC). The research-informed impact of this work is two-fold. Firstly BDRC has influenced, and continues to influence, decision- and policy-making involving 170 States on how to strengthen global governance through improvements to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC). As a consequence of this influence BDRC has changed the practices of institutions and individual researchers and thus has, through novel training and curriculum development, helped foster a culture of biosecurity to reduce the risk of inadvertent or deliberate misuse of life and associated science research.
We have established a primate research centre (The Macaque Study Centre) in a zoo environment (Marwell Zoo) for research into primate social cognition. Visitors can watch the science taking place, which 1) significantly increases their perception of the zoo as a place of learning, 2) increases their knowledge about the specific research being conducted, and 3) improves children's attitudes to science as an exciting subject. Marwell Zoo integrate the research into their educational workshops, and similar facilities are now being established in other zoos in light of the demonstrable scientific, public engagement/involvement and animal welfare benefits.
The George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling (GEECS) is the only UK academic research centre devoted to the study of storytelling and its applications. Our research has supported the development and renewed public awareness of storytelling as a powerful, democratic art form. The impact of our storytelling research is both cultural and social as it has generated new understandings of community formation, connectivity and capacity through creative participation. Collaboration with 16 national, international and local partners since 2008 enables the impact of our research to secure both a wide reach within civil society and attain real significance within local communities.