Search for "epigenetics"
Biology and sociology: estrangement and entanglement
December 8, 2017
Ever since my PhD, I have been fascinated by the interplay, interrelations, mutual inspirations, struggle and strife between various disciplines that began to establish themselves during the 19th century, such as linguistics (which became the focus of my research), sociology, biology and so on. In recent years, a little flood of literature has emerged that …
The microbiome goes viral
May 12, 2017
In this post, I want to return to a topic that started to fascinate me in 2007, namely the microbiome. In 2009 I published an article (with Iina Hellsten) about the metaphors used to make the microbiome public, but then didn’t do any further research on the topic, apart from writing a blog post stimulated by Jon …
Our microbiome: Separating hype from health
May 5, 2017
This is a blog post by Nicholas Staropoli, originally posted at the Epigenetics Literacy Project on April 18, 2017. It’s reposted here with permission. The post deals with the issue of hype, which we have discussed a lot on this blog; in this post the focus is on the microbiome. *** The details of science — how to …
Biosocial: A brief conceptual history
April 21, 2017
I have recently come across the word ‘biosocial’ in various social science debates about epigenetics and other advances in the life- and bio-sciences. A chapter in a book on ‘social epigenetics’ (and the ‘biosocial’) says for example: “Epigenetics has considerable potential to transform social science by embedding mutually regulative reciprocal connections between biological and social …
Making Science Public: 2016 blog round-up
December 19, 2016
This has been a weird and momentous year. For me personally and, even more so, for the world. In June this year we celebrated the almost end of the Making Science Public programme, which I directed between 2012 and 2016. At the end of September I retired, after working for more than 25 years at the University …
Making sense of plasticity
December 2, 2016
I recently got an invitation to a workshop on ‘Plasticity and its Limits’ (which will bring together scholars from the social sciences, humanities and life sciences and focuses mainly on epigenetics). When I accepted the invitation I had, I have to confess, not given much thought to the concept of plasticity – I had, however, …
The Institute for Science and Society: Past, present, future
October 2, 2016
Many of you will have seen a new video of the brilliant work done at the Faculty of Social Sciences here at the University of Nottingham since about 1948. I was looking at this during my last days as Director of the Making Science Public programme and also through the eyes of a co-founder of …
The epigenetic muddle and the trouble with science writing
August 5, 2016
I have been interested in epigenetics, especially public portrayals of epigenetics, for about six or seven years. About three years ago I tried to get some funding to examine emerging and changing meanings of epigenetics in traditional and new media (including what one might call ‘alternative’ media), but unfortunately never got the funding. When writing …