BIOS News Issue 9. Summer 2008

BIOSBIOS NewsIssue 9 • Summer 2008

In this issue

In the main feature article of this issue, Sarah Franklin tells of BIOS going back to school, reaching out to a mixed population of students, many coming from socially deprived environments. Sarah gives a vibrant account of her involvement in a creative and didactic art-science initiative, called ‘Future Mix’, at the South Camden Community School, near King’s Cross. Her mission was to deliver an authentic picture of what goes on in stem cells and regenerative medicine labs and clinics and to encourage students to engage in creative speculations about how new technologies might be used. The result was a vivacious, original and inventive reshuffl ing of concepts, images and ideas that informed and entertained the students. The project teaches us about the usefulness of artistic endeavours which, unlike conventional debates, can, with imagery and ambiguity, transcend boundaries and critically envision new futures.

Joelle Abi-Rached, gives an eloquent and articulate description of the premises, aims and methodologies of ‘Brain Self and Society’, a project convened by professor Nikolas Rose and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, aimed at verifying the emergence of the ‘new brain sciences’, mapping their boundaries and scrutinising their socio-political and personal impact.

We also have two conference reports. Leo Kim reports from a workshop held at LSE called ‘Genes without borders’, at which delegates refl ected on boundaries between imagined societies and publics in a global scale, on global governance of genomics and on politics of uncertainty. Valentina

Editorial 1

‘BIOS goes back to school’ by Sarah Franklin 2

‘Brain, Self and Society: a three-fold cord to be untangled’ by Joelle Abi-Rached 3

‘Constructing the politics of uncertainty’ by Leo Kim 4

‘ScienceFutures’ by Valentina Amorese 5

Research updates 6

Postcards to BIOS 8

Publications, lectures and conference presentations 10

Upcoming events 12

BIOS News Issue 9 • Summer 2008 1

A kick start to the new yearThe new year at BIOS started with a good dose of energy and with a fresh look into the future.

Amorese tells of her fi rst participation in an international conference, ‘Science Futures’, at which together with the other participants, she refl ected on the idea of ‘future’ and how it has evolved in relationship with all of the fulfi lled and unfulfi lled science’s hopes and hypes that have characterized the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st.

In our regular pages, Joelle Abi-Rached and Giovanni Frazzetto give their research updates, while Linsey McGoey, the latest graduate from the centre, greets us with a farewell postcard on the way to her new destination. We will miss her and wish her all the best for her future undertakings.

Do not miss the list of BIOS events for the Summer term!

South Camden Community School (SCCS) is a large London Comprehensive situated near King’s Cross. It serves a mixed population, with most of its 1500 students coming from Black and ethnic minorities, many from families that have recently immigrated to the UK. Levels of social deprivation in the area are high, and the School has been praised for its innovative and committed teaching staff.

BIOS goes back to schoolby Sarah Franklin

2 BIOS News Issue 9 • Summer 2008

SCCS is also a specialist arts college and in 2007 entered into a partnership with the Wellcome Trust, the Royal Institution, and Artakt to launch ‘Future Mix’, (www.futuremix.co.uk), an artist and scientist school residency focussed on themes such as animal cloning, regenerative medicine, life extension and synthetic biology. The project was designed to explore the boundaries between human and non-human, nature and artefact, science and art, and to produce a series of public events and a website. My role in this project, along with Chris Mason of UCL, was to provide the lecture content for a series of 8 sessions last autumn from which students would produce imaginative future-orientated art projects led by artist Carl Stevenson.

Following a series of discussions with team leader and Artakt Director Catarina Albano, and SCCS science teacher Tiyan Miller, our fi rst task was to choose a set of topics and an approach that would not simply regurgitate well known clichés about Frankenbunny horrors, or the image of science racing ahead out of control. The lecture style Chris and I devised tried to emphasise the practical goals of scientifi c research into stem cells, cloning, regenerative medicine and to be as specifi c as possible about what is actually being done in labs and clinics

– and why – as opposed to encouraging more ‘tabloid’ speculation about either dystopic or miraculous futures.

Our goal of encouraging students to engage in creative speculation about how new technologies might be used, and how they might alter or challenge existing defi nitions of the human, made it diffi cult to achieve a ‘balanced’ or ‘objective’ approach – although despite the impossibility of so doing this remained our working ‘rule of thumb’. We were aided in our pedagogical efforts by the experience, patience and insight of artist Carl Stevenson, who devised in-class projects for each session. Following a short lecture on regenerative medicine, for example, Carl led students in a ‘cloning’ experiment in which each student took a mould of their own hand and then made a perfect plaster cast of it. I was struck by the verisimilitude of the plaster of paris hands that sprouted all over the classroom that afternoon and by the many visceral resonances this created with our topic (as well as quite a mess and several blocked drains).

As the project evolved, it grew more visceral still. In a later exercise, students smashed their hands with a hammer, digitally photographing the aftermath of each blow from a fi xed position. Run in reverse, the stop gap animation shows a hand regrowing, and run as a loop it shows a cycle of renewal. For me this exercise moved us from a ‘manual’, or ‘manuscript’ to a ‘manumentary’ or even ‘manifesto’ of a handmade hand remaking itself. Carl added more cloning into the mix with the freeware Audacity, which can be used to ‘clone’ extracts of voice recordings, to provide audio content for the fi lms.

As with any such exercise it was mostly unclear where any of this was headed, and, as would be expected of any such project involving several partners in a large and under-privileged inner city comprehensive, we met several challenges along the way. Eid was a diffi cult period when many students

were fasting and falling asleep at their desks. Our non-standard lesson plans sometimes led to chaos in the classroom. On more than one occasion our carefully-laid plans had to be abandoned when unexpected events such as School inspections and extra exam sessions had to be fi tted into a tight schedule. My understanding of what is involved in teaching large classes of teenagers who have confl icting needs and are accustomed to working in disruptive environments rose proportionately with my respect for the teachers and students who persevere against the odds to sustain viable learning environments.

Nothing could have prepared me, however, for the opening of Future Mix on a dark and rainy winter night mid-February. Not only was I greeted in the school lobby by a brightly-lit life-sized replica of Dolly the cloned sheep in a vibrant green paddock all her own, but she had herself been transformed into a kind of ‘clonogram’ covered with messages from her creators. More incredibly still, these messages were printed in a font devised by the students by dressing themselves in sheep outfi ts, forming themselves into letters, and photographing themselves as A, B, C, etc. All around Dolly were photo displays and interactive terminals featuring artwork related to the project. The buzz was electric. The local press were having a fi eld day (sic.), photographing everyone and everything, while the students struggled to contain their excitement about the project and the stir it had caused throughout the school.

Later this year Future Mix will be the basis for a larger exhibition at the Royal Institute. Both Chris and I will continue to be involved in the science curriculum at the School, and with Artakt in Future Mix II. This exercise taught me a lot about the unexpectedly creative dialogue about the future of the biosciences that emerged despite the considerable pedagogical challenges involved in what frequently felt like a


Brain, Self and Society: a three-fold cord to be untangledby Joelle Abi Rached

‘Brain Self and Society: the socio-political implications of the new brain sciences’ (see http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/brainSelfSociety/) is a recent project convened by professor Nikolas Rose and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. The project is launched almost two decades after George W Bush declared the 1990s as, ‘the decade of the brain’, and two-decades and a half since the French neuroscientist Jean-Pierre Changeux published L’homme neuronal. In addition, it is conceived at the beginning of a century with an unprecedented recorded prevalence of mood disorders.

The political declaration and the publication of the Neuronal man: the biology of the mind are noteworthy for two reasons. The former typifi es how political agendas intricately shape scientifi c projects; in other words how science is in the end ‘politics by other means’ as Callon et al. put it. The latter is the fi rst comprehensive account by a neuroscientist of what can be summed up as the ‘neurolization’ or ‘molecularization’ of personhood-a widely entrenched ‘thought-style’ in our present epoch.

The aim of the project is twofold. First, to investigate whether we can speak of a new fi eld called the ‘new brain sciences’ behind the emergent neurochemical identity and neurolization of culture. This new fi eld is hypothetically thought to be a concatenation of different brain-related disciplines and sub-disciplines from the basic and applied neurosciences, to visualization (ie neuroimaging), psychopharmacology (eg antidepressants), and other neurotechnologies (eg ‘brain fi ngerprinting’). Second, to investigate whether these new ways of scrutinizing brain, mind and behaviour are having as

signifi cant a socio-political and personal impact in the 21st century as did the emergence of psychological conceptions of personhood in the 20th century. There are good reasons why this should be the case. Suffi ces to mention the major social impact psychology had on many aspects including our common language, understanding and treatment of distress, on conceptions of normality and abnormality, on practices of regulation, normalisation, reformation and correction, on marketing and consumption technologies, on the management of human behaviour be it in education and child rearing, in the factory, or the military.

The aim is to map the extent to which the new brain sciences are changing forms of professional authority, redrawing the divisions of ‘normality’ and ‘psychopathology’, reconfi guring practices of intervention and control, impacting on the military and security apparatus, and reshaping ideas of selfhood as well as introducing new ethico-legal challenges.

The research will be conducted using a combination of methods, including historical and genealogical research, interviews with key actors in the UK, USA and Europe, and three case studies (focusing on changing forms of clinical mental health practices and control practices, and military and security research-of which one rising aspect has been termed ‘neurosecurity’). The research will also use cartographies of styles of thought in the hope of making sense of such complex techno-scientifi c fi elds. The focus will particularly be on Fleck’s analysis of ‘thought-styles’ and ‘thought-collectives’, a combination of scientometrics-related methods and concept mapping, and Latour’s techniques for charting ‘scientifi c controversies’.

project beset by failure. Perhaps as in science it is true of teaching that the most important lessons come from unexpected places. The ability of artistic forms to transcend the limits of a fi nite literalism that often constrains debate on topics such as cloning was strongly reinforced by this project.

Of course, knowing myself that ‘sheep are good to think with’ fi nding Dolly in the school lobby surrounded by admirers was at another level no

surprise. But in the sheep-human alphabet devised by students to ask her questions about the future – such as whether it is lonely to be a clone – I was reminded of the excitement and the intelligence more creative approaches bring to the complicated visceral questions about technologically-assisted biofutures. To learn more yourself, take a look at the future mix website, and be prepared to accept an invitation to follow sheep outside the box!

Of course, knowing myself that ‘sheep are good to think with’ fi nding Dolly in the school lobby surrounded by admirers was at another level no surprise.

BIOS Goes Back to School continued…

Constructing the politics of uncertaintyGenes without Borders workshop (18 January 2008)

by Leo Kim

Concerning the global governance of genomics, as one speaker pointed out, ‘it is more an ambition than it is reality.’ Fundamental questions arose; what is globalisation? What is left out in the process? How, when, and why the question of globalisation emerged in the context of genomics? Answers abound, which converge on the point that nothing is certain.

The general idea of the workshop in LSE may have indeed based on the ‘principle of uncertainty’. It is not unrelated to the shift in focus of the scientifi c study from gene to genome, the latter presupposing complex relations of interactions whereas the former assumes rather simple causality of determinism of gene. If we move away from the former assumption of gene, that a

Tim Spector’s Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) presentation, that it is a case of illustration that genes ‘make sense’ because they are paradoxical, not despite of it, could probably be understood in the same context; why we are here today is to construct the

‘democratic expert authority’ in the boundary of science that formerly was constructed by the ‘imaginary’ of scientists themselves. This may be a rightful claim for the social scientists engaged in natural science. So was the co-production thesis proposed by Brian Salter. Drawing upon Sheila Jasanoff’s work on co-production, he emphasised the interaction between governance knowledge and scientifi c knowledge, and the establishment of standards as systems of rule in the globe where tensions between science, society and market have become intensifi ed.

In this sense, the title of the workshop, ‘Genes without Borders’, signifi ed the desire to draw boundaries of imagined society and public in the global scale, based on the critical review of ‘genetic exceptionalism’. In that context, I refl ect that the workshop that was full of rich discussions required one more question: Who, based on what principle, can claim the boundary of democratic expert authority in genomic society? While the ongoing attempts to construct the ‘politics of uncertainty’ were meaningful enough, the self-governance of the ‘politics itself’ remained to be a task of self-refl ection.

certain gene determines some traits or diseases, applying the knowledge to the wider social context becomes more complicated and problematic.

Thus, Mairi Levitt discussed DNA profi ling in the context of forensic identifi cation, where it is often represented as a ‘language of truth’, and in the context of genetics research into criminal behaviour, where it serves as a ‘language of risk’. Elisa Pieri discussed possible impacts of behavioural genetics and of DNA evidence in the courtroom. She suggested DNA evidence is still being regarded as the ‘language of truth’, despite expert uncertainty and disagreement, while genetic susceptibility might enjoy at best low evidence status. Barbara Prainsack discussed the roles that genomics play in forensics and returned to the question of a ‘language of truth’ vs ‘language of risk’. She posed the question whether we might be too quick in assuming that novel genetics and genomics applications create new identities, suggesting it might rather be that genetics and genomics enforce existing identities and concepts such as ethnicity.

Nikolas Rose suggested, in regards to the question on what is the basis of authority of governance in the problem of representation, that three elements would be vital for the mechanism of governance: democratic authority, expert authority, and scientifi c authority. In fact, what Sarah Franklin referred to


What is noteworthy besides the project’s ultimate contributions to

a wide range of disciplines and interest groups including

academics, psychiatrists, bioethicists and policy

makers, is its non a priori stand, which is crucial for at least three reasons. First, it avoids sending us in the war trench between social

‘constructivists’ for whom a scientifi c fact is a mere trompe l’oeil and staunch

positivists for whom physicalism is the rule

of law. Second, it does not presupposes the

existence of an ‘invisible hand’ (be it scientifi c or

political) that is in control of changing trends and practices.

Third, it considers ‘truth’ not as subjective or objective but determined within a thought-style as envisioned by Fleck. Claims to truth and objectivity are seen as an ‘event’ in the history of thought or as Foucault would say, an event in the project of a particular episteme. Briefl y, a thought-style, a much earlier formulation of the iconic Kuhnian notion of ‘paradigm shift’, refers to a tradition of shared assumptions that are unconsciously taken for granted and thus rarely questioned or only questioned when challenging the prevalent thought-style. It is only when these shared assumptions and beliefs clash with prevailing ideas of the time that a new authoritative thought-style emerges that selects the problematics and formulates the answers.

The project is currently in its fi rst phase of collecting historical documents, identifying the key actors, key issues, key claims and focusing on ways of charting, analyzing and visualizing

massive data. This mapping process, at once metaphorical, methodological, and technical is an essential initial step in retracing the ‘composition’ of the fi eld and its discourse(s). Even if one is doomed to be stuck with many ‘here be dragons’, without a map the fi eld is simply left to mythology. Anaximander, the fi rst to have drawn a map of the world, did so in an attempt to elucidate the nature or ‘order’ of the world far from myths and mythology. Likewise, and without any claim of exactitude, scientists and cynics alike, can create and sustain ‘myths’ as long as the historical and socio-cultural life of the

‘fact’ remains invisible. As Latour writes, the challenge will thus be to ‘untangle the network of alliances of people (eyewitnesses, historical actors, scholars, readers, teachers, students) and of things (books, manuscripts, articles, archives, letters, diaries, buildings, artifacts) that hold [a fact] together.’

Brain, Self and Society: a three-fold cord to be untangled continued…


The fi rst time I went abroad to present a paper; luckily, I wasn’t alone: Amy and Shahanah (two other PhD students from the BIOS centre) were with me, and just like for me, this was also their fi rst real conference. However, since it was organized in Zurich, where Shahanah lived for quite a long time, we could really felt like we were at home.

The conference’s main aim was to refl ect on the idea of future and understand how it has changed in relationship with all of the fulfi lled and unfulfi lled science’s hopes and hypes that have characterized the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty fi rst. In order to do that, the participants engaged with relevant questions like whether fundamental dichotomies like dead and alive, male and female, artifi cial and natural will lose their meaning, or what the role of the past is in refl ecting and speculating on the future, or fi nally if the way we approach science studies nowadays will still be applicable for future researchers in science. The conference works were opened by professor Naomi Oreskes (University California, San Diego), who gave a fascinating talk about destruction of knowledge as a possible alternative

to its production. We spent the three days that followed going from one session to another, and quite a broad range of topics were put on the table for discussion. Some of the most interesting sessions I attended looked at the reality of the social in science fi ction, or at the biological utopia and dystopia that characterize biological and social discourses, and fi nally at the futuristic visions that emerge when debating nanotechnology. What surprised me the most was realizing how spread and varied science studies can be, and just how many topics they can engage with.

This contributed remarkably in making the atmosphere very interdisciplinary and it certainly helped us to feel comfortable when we presented our papers. Shahanah and Amy talked on the second day of the conference in one of the afternoon session called ‘Biological Utopias and Dystopias’, while I had to wait until the last day. During her presentation Amy, through the lens of Canada, explored some of the possible consequences that using a genomic approach could have when dealing with race and ethnicity discourses; while Shahanah, using the case study of In Vitro Fertilization in the German speaking part of Switzerland, refl ected on the concept of present future, which she developed in relationship with the well known Foucauldian idea of ‘history of the present’.

In my talk instead I explored some of the different scenarios that characterized the development of agro-biotechnology studies though the case study of genetically engineered food and crops in Italy and the United Kingdom. I have to

admit that I was both quite nervous and excited, but luckily I had a very good audience, that made very useful and interesting comments that will help me think and further develop my research.

Amongst all the sessions we attended, during these quite intense three days, personally the ones that I enjoyed the most were the two plenary talks held on Saturday 9 February. Early in the morning Susan Squier, from the University of Pennsylvania, using the case study of the chicken, explored the myth of disembodied knowledge; while in the late afternoon Paul Rabinow, from Berkeley University, California, refl ecting on the case of synthetic biology, explored some of the novel discourses that are currently emerging in both social and ethical studies when dealing with modern life sciences.

Of course I am not an expert in conferences, however I think ScienceFutures was a particularly interesting one, well realized, and enjoyable, and I look forward to future experiences like this one.

ScienceFutures:a conference to refl ect on the future of social studies as on natural sciences’ hopes and hypes‘ScienceFutures’ is the name of the conference that was organized in Zurich from the 6 to the 9 of February by the Swiss Association for the Studies of Science, Technologies and Society and the History of Knowledge Centre, and, just for the record, it was also my fi rst conference.

by Valentina Amorese

Research updates


Joelle Abi RachedResearch Offi cer

Brain, self and society: the socio-political implications of the new brain sciences

When Professor Nikolas Rose called to offer me the position, I had already packed my suitcases and was spending the remaining 48hrs in London anxious about returning to a country in constant turmoil. When I hung up, I realized that the course of

my life had unexpectedly changed. My journey started in BIOS on October 2007 just a month after completing LSE’s MSc. in Philosophy and Public Policy and spending eight years in biology and medicine, studying tissues, organs and bodies (dead and alive), alternating between the ward, the clinic, and the laboratory.

The research position turned out to be a wonderful opportunity because it touched on two sensitive points, my fondness of psychiatry and my strong

belief in an un-compartmentalized corpus of knowledge. It is the latter belief that I found embodied in BIOS, a vibrant and intellectual milieu I serendipitously discovered in Eric Kandel’s memorable lecture at LSE.

I wrote my masters dissertation on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), albeit from an ethical perspective, out of an interest in the power and vulnerability of the mind but also out of a conviction in Fromm’s idea that a whole society rather than individuals may lack in sanity. That claim made sense in the country I come from: Lebanon looks like a gigantic psychiatric hospital of people traumatized from years of bloody ‘civil’ wars and endless political unrest. Interestingly enough, Israeli author, Lizzie Doron, recently described Israel as, ‘the largest psychiatric hospital in the world for post-traumatic Jews’!

A very curious observation, now that I look at my dissertation retrospectively, is my endorsement of the psychiatric category as defi ned by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel (DSM-IV). I took PTSD for granted (though I explicitly acknowledged its historical contingency) because it constitutes the common language shared by psychiatrists, social workers and policy makers, and accordingly the prevalent discourse around psychological trauma.

Does this mean the positivistic outlook of my training deluded me and that PTSD is a mere ‘social construct’ or ‘harmony of illusion’? Surely not! Nevertheless, it indicates the extent to which the psyche’s neurophysiological dimension has infi ltrated the discourse on selfhood and personhood, to the point of being used and abused as a hard

‘fact’-in the media or across the biomedical literature. One of the challenges of this project will thus consist in retracing the birth of this ‘neurolization’ of the self and culture and its socio-political ramifi cations without any a priori. Mapping the neuro-fi eld here we come!

Giovanni Frazzetto‘Society in Science’ Branco Weiss Fellow

Genetic Reductionism and Identity: A Scientifi c, Philosophical, Sociological and Cultural Perspective

In the past year, I have mainly refl ected on issues of medicalisation, with special focus on the availability of psychopharmacological drugs and the profi tability of their markets. I have tried to highlight the existence of a general dynamic feedback loop between developments and fi ndings in behavioural genetic research and a medicalising society that perpetrates the expansion of the number of behavioural traits falling under the gaze of medicine and their labeling as pathological.

I have concluded a study that describes the dynamics of ADHD diagnosis and the regulations of treatment with methylphenidate in the specifi c context of Italy and shows that these are strongly infl uenced by the psychiatric tradition of the country as well as civil ideals of ‘right to health’.

Right now, I am concentrated on work that I started during my three-months residency at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, specifi cally on the medicalisation of anxiety, which is the behaviour I am studying in the laboratory. I am interested in analysing whether or not anxiety can be defi ned as an historical constant, in alignment with the universalism of its biological substratum, and whether or how the dynamics of its medicalisation have changed over time, especially comparing the impact of the ‘minor tranquillisers’ and of the serotonin selective re-uptake inhibitors. By drawing data from the latest neuroscience literature on anxiety and the spectacle of old and new anxiety drug advertisements, I attempt to delineate whether in the past fi fty years or so the nature of this condition, its experience as well as the promises and expectations to overcome it, have remained unchanged, and fi nally whether the promises have been met with fulfi lment or disillusion.

I am now also accelerating work on my long-standing project on ‘Neuroculture’, for which there will be soon a website: www.neuroculture.org.

Research updates continued…


BioSocietiesBioSocietiesBioSocietiesBioSocietiBioSocietiesBioSocietiesBioSocietiesBioSocietiBioSocietiesBioSocietiesBioSocietiesBioSocietiBioSocietiesBioSocietiesBioSocietiesBioSocieti

Vol 3, issue 1‘While we should not lose our wonder at the discoveries reported almost on a daily basis, we should also remember that, in the life sciences as perhaps nowhere else, the ultimate test of these discoveries will be the benefi t, or otherwise, that they can confer on the lives of human beings – not only those in the affl uent sectors of the wealthy West, but also those whose life chances are determined more by social disadvantage, poverty and prejudice than by high-tech science and medicine.’

www.journals.cambridge.org/jid_BIO

Out now!


Farewell to cakes, roundtables and BIOSocialityLinsey McGoey

Over the years, I have read touching leaving postcards from BIOS visitors, students and staff who have passed through the centre, and always wondered how I fi nd proper words to say good-bye to my BIOS ‘family’ when I left.

I recently fi nished my PhD thesis, and am now leaving BIOS after three and half years. As a Canadian living in London, BIOS has been a home away from home for me. My colleagues have always been more than simply colleagues: they have been some of my best friends in London, and have been confi dantes on life and work on many occasions.

I think the uniqueness of the place is encapsulated by the fact that, in leaving LSE to take up an ESRC postdoctoral fellowship at Oxford University, lots of academic colleagues I have run into recently have said: ‘That’s great, I suppose, about Oxford. But surely it’s not quite the same at BIOS!’.

BIOS has grown immensely over the past three years, and at times I was nostalgic for some of the members I met in my fi rst year or so. Carlos Novas’ friendship and support was a great help, and luckily the institutions he and Filippa Lentzos helped to establish are still thriving, such as Wednesday cakes and the roundtable sessions. Beers at the George have never been quite as fun, or the conversations quite as thought-provoking, since Michael Barr’s departure – but thankfully Kevin Burchell arrived to create BIOSociality drinks.

I’m grateful to everyone at BIOS for making the place so special. Thanks in particular to Scott Vrecko, Megan Clinch, Chris Hamilton, Ilina Singh, Ayo Wahlberg, Giovanni Frazzetto, Sabrina Fernandez, Sheila Sugavanam, Filippa Lentzos, Sinéad Keenan, David Reubi, Sarah Franklin, Amy Hinterberger, Btihaj Ajana, Shahanah Schmid, Joëlle Abi-Rached and Rachel Bell.

Most of all, I want to thank my supervisor Nikolas Rose for being the most supportive and inspiring mentor a person could ask for. I couldn’t have fi nished my thesis without the support of my BIOS colleagues, and Nikolas is particular, and I can’t thank them enough. I miss BIOS lots, but, like Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused, I’ll probably keep popping round until they escort me from the next BIOSociality drinks.

Postcards to BIOS


We are pleased to invite applications to the fi rst interdisciplinary ‘NeuroSchool’ of the European Neuroscience and Society Network, a fi ve year programme involving leading neuroscientists and social scientists from eleven European countries in collaborative research and debate. The NeuroSchool is a week-long event hosted by the ENSN.

The aim of the school is to foster learning in a interdisciplinary symmetrical environment. It is intended for graduate students and post-doctoral fellows engaged in neuroscience research or in historical or social studies of neuroscience.

The topic of this year’s NeuroSchool is behavioural genetics. Together, we will critically assess the current methodologies of experimentation in this branch of research and will discuss its implications in the context of contemporary society. Lectures will cover the history of behavioural genetics, the latest scientifi c evidence in the fi eld, as well as the history and sociology of psychotropic drugs.

Tutors and lecturers include Cornelius Gross (EMBL), Klaus-Peter Lesch (University of Wuerzburg), Nikolas Rose (BIOS, London School of Economics) and Ilina Singh (BIOS, LSE).

There will be ample opportunities for cross-exchange of data and insights and to think creatively about innovative avenues in the fi eld and fruitful inter-disciplinary collaborations. The course will consist of a balanced mixture of theoretical and hands-on practical modules offered by a small core of senior experts and will be designed to ensure maximum dialogue across disciplines. This will be a rare opportunity to engage in detailed interdisciplinary dialogue and research over an extended period. Participants will also present their own research.

We invite applications from highly motivated scholars in biology, neuroscience, sociology, anthropology, psychology and history/philosophy of science. Applicants will be selected on the basis of their merit, research interests and aspirations and will have all their travel and accommodation expenses covered.

For more information visit www.lse.ac.uk/collections/ENSN/neuroschool.htm

First Interdisciplinary NeuroSchool of the European Neuroscience and Society Network:EMBL, Monterotondo (Rome), 28 September – 5 October 2008


Publications

Frazzetto, G (2008) ‘Neural Networking in Manhattan’, Commissioned Review for the New York based Festival ‘Brainwave’, Nature, 451: 772.

Lentzos, F (2008) ‘Countering misuse of life sciences through regulatory multiplicity’ Science and Public Policy Vol.35(1): 55–64.

Vrecko,S (2008) ‘Capital venture into biology: biosocial dynamics in the industry and science of gambling’, Economy and Society, 37(1): 50-67.

Wahlberg, A (2008) ‘Pathways to plausibility – when herbs become pills’, BioSocieties, 3(1): 37-56.

Presentations

Amorese, V (2008) ‘Shaping the future: the shift from science to society’, presented at Sciencefutures, Zurich, 6-9 February 2008.

Braun, K (2008) ‘ ‘A certain amount of engineering involved’, scientifi c governance, the participatory turn and the new genetics’, BIOS Centre Research Seminar, 6 March 2008.

Braun, K (2008) ‘Bioethik in der Politik: Vom technokratischen Model zur Politik des richtigen Sprechens’, presented at Symposium on Bioethics, Care and Gender, 12 April 2008.

Braun, K (2008) ‘The public sphere: debating biomedicine and biotechnology in a democracy’, presented at Centre for Democratisation Studies, University of Leeds, 24 April 2008.

Burchell, K (2008) ‘Purifying public culture: scientists’ constructions of public engagement’, invited Public Culture in Theory and Practice seminar, Department of Anthropology, Durham University, 13 February 2008.

Frazzetto, G (2008) ‘Neuroculture: the Cerebral and the Neurochemical Subject’, Invited presentation at the School of Visual Arts, New York, 15 February 2008.

Frazzetto, G (2008) ‘Behavioural Genetics: from the Lab to Society and Back’, invited lecture at the University of Cyprus, Nicosia, 3 April 2008.

Hinterberger, A (2008) ‘A brave new world? Charting the imagined futures of human genomic diversity on the biological horizon’, presented at ScienceFutures Conference, Zurich, February 2008.

Hinterberger, A (2008) ‘Genomic Cartographies: Race, Ethnicity and Populations in Canada’, presented at DNA, Race and History, Rutgers University (N.J.), April 2008.

Hinterberger, A (2008) ‘The use of ‘race’ in Canadian genomics research’, presented at What’s the Use of Race?, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), April 2008.

Publications, lectures and conference presentations by BIOS staff, associates and students


Publications, lectures and conference presentations by BIOS staff, associates and students continued…

Kabatoff, M (2008) ‘Conditions of Membership: The Face and Biometrics in the UK’, presented at Peterhouse Theory Group, University of Cambridge, 13 February 2008.

Lentzos, Filippa (2008) ‘Communicating security-sensitive life science research’, invited presentation at workshop on Making Small Facts Travel: Labels, Packages and Vehicles, Department of Economic History, LSE, 27 March 2008.

Schmid, S (2008) ‘Reproducing futures of the present’, paper presented at ScienceFutures,Swiss STS Meeting 2008, Zurich, 6th-9th February 2008

Vrecko, S (2007) ‘Biology under control: ‘magic bullets’ as agents of social and medical transformation’, invited presentation, BIOS Centre Seminar Series, LSE, December 2007.

Wahlberg, A (2008) ‘The Concept of ‘Quality’ in Reproductive Medicine in China’, invited presentation, Anthropology of East and Inner Asia Seminar, London School of Economics, 13 March 2008

Wahlberg, A (2008) ‘Indigenous medicines, indigenous identities

– reviving traditional medicine in postcolonial Viet Nam’, invited presentation, Anthropologie des thérapeutiques, Approches pluridisciplinaires de l’Asie du Sud-Est, Centre Asie du sud-Est, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifi que (CNRS), Paris, 26 March 2008.

Wahlberg, A (2008) ‘Does it work? Effi cacy, placebo and the contested value of complementary medicine’, invited talk, Médicament comme Objet Social (MEOS) seminar series, University of Montreal, Canada, 22 April 2008.

Upcoming BIOS events

BIOS • The London School

of Economics and Political

Science • Houghton Street

London WC2A 2AE

Tel: +44 (0)20 7955 6998

Fax: +44 (0)20 7955 6565

www.lse.ac.uk/collections/BIOS/


During term time, the BIOS research seminar series and BIOS reading group sessions are held regularly on Thursdays and Wednesdays respectively. The Thursday seminar series feature invited speakers to discuss their research on various social and ethical aspects of the life sciences and biomedicine, while the reading group facilitates discussion around a series of topics that are of interest to persons associated with BIOS or who have an interest in the life sciences throughout the LSE and beyond.

Dates for your calendar May – September 2008

15 May 2008 ‘ Understanding public dialogue on science and

technology’

Dr Kevin Burchell, BIOS Centre, LSE

5-7pm, Room H216 (2nd Floor, Connaught House)

12 June 2008 ‘ Risky Bioscience? National Security versus

Scientifi c Autonomy in Anglo-American Policies on

the Life Sciences’

Dr Filippa Lentzos, BIOS Centre, LSE

5-7pm, Room H216 (2nd Floor, Connaught House)

10 July 2008 Dame Dr Anne McLaren Memorial Symposium:

The Contribution of Scientists to Law, Policy

and Ethics related to Human Fertilisation and

Embryology in the UK, 1978-2008.

LSE BIOS Centre and Law Department in association

with the Wellcome Trust

By invitation only, contact [email protected]

for more information

BIOS Reading Group

In the Summer Term, the reading group will meet 1-3pm on 21 May, 11 June

and 2 July in room U203. Check the BIOS website for an updated Lent Term

programme and reading list.

BIOS Roundtables

BIOS roundtables will continue in the Lent Term aiming at exploring shared

interests in the BIOS community, and to address problems, issues, and

concerns encountered. See the bulletin board for dates and to sign up!

Documents

BIOS News Issue 9. Summer 2008