It was great to visit the Engage conference, which focuses on university public engagement, in Edinburgh last week (29-30 November, 2018). This year, the conference themes focused on looking forward to public engagement futures and looking back over the ten years since the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement was established. You can find out more here.
I have a longstanding interest in public engagement.
However, this time, I was primarily at Engage as part of a session on the 2018-9 Public Attitudes to Science research, which is funded by BEIS. The session was kicked off with an introduction by Tony Whitney in the Science, Research and Innovation team in BEIS. I then talked about the findings of the international literature review that I have undertaken as part of the research. I was followed by Amy Busby, of Kantar Public (who are leading the research), who talked about a digital dialogue that Kantar has run on trust in science and scientists.
A common theme in my talk and Amy's talk was a distinction between trust in scientists and science as a profession (which is very strong) and trust in what happens when science is employed in technologies (which is more mixed). The session was well-attended and there were some interesting questions after the talks.
The literature review is currently in review by the project Advisory Group and it is expected that it will be published in early 2019. The new research will be published later in 2019.
Previous UK PAS research is available here.
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