Sarah R. Davies is Professor of Technosciences, Materiality, & Digital Cultures at the Department of Science and Technology Studies. Her work explores how science and society are co-produced – how society defines the conditions of scientific research, and how science is present in wider society. The ‘red thread’ of the digital and digitisation runs throughout. She has written about hackers and hackerspaces, how scientists experience the conditions of contemporary academia, and science communication formats such as science festivals or museums.
Her PhD (2008) was carried out at Imperial College London. Since then her career has been highly international: she has worked in the UK, US, Denmark (as a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellow, before becoming associate professor) and Norway. She has published a number of books, including Hackerspaces (2017, Polity), Science Communication (2016, Palgrave, with Maja Horst), and Exploring Science Communication (2020, SAGE, with Ulrike Felt). She is a co-founder of the Science in Public conference series, sits on the scientific committee of the International Network for the Public Communication of Science and Technology, and has given more than 20 invited keynote talks and public lectures across Denmark, Switzerland, New Zealand, Austria, the US, UK, Germany, and France since 2014.
More on Sarah Davies
What is the role of communication in and for universities within society, and what functions does it serve?
In this talk I draw on research into science communication to discuss the different purposes that communication may have, from marketing to nurturing democratic debate.
I also reflect on some of the challenges that may arise when communication misses its intended audience or purpose, using the notion of ‘auto-communication’ to suggest that university communication plays a central role in creating and supporting a coherent organisational identity.