In an era marked by unprecedented technological advancements and global challenges, the relationship between scientists and the wider public has never been more important.

Are scientists and citizens truly engaged in meaningful dialogue, or is there a growing disconnect that hampers collective progress? These are the pressing questions to be explored in "Connecting Science with People: the Power of Civic Science," at the annual event hosted by the US-UK Fulbright Commission in partnership with the British Library’s Eccles Institute.

Civic science is a process by which all of us get to shape and benefit from science. It means scientists taking active roles as citizens and citizens from all walks of life engaging with scientific research and its social and moral implications. So how do we build such a culture in today’s world? And what difference can it make?

The discussion will juxtapose the experience of the US where there is a growing “civic science” movement with that of the UK by bringing together the Dean of Boston University’s College of Communication and former editor of Scientific American Mariette DiChristina with Mark Miodownik, the UCL Professor of Materials and Society who is also a popular broadcaster and bestselling author. The event will be chaired by the US-UK Fulbright Commission’s first ever Civic Science Fellows: science journalist Melanie Brown and the British Science Association’s Head of Policy, Partnerships, and Impact Clio Heslop.

18:00 - Drinks reception

1 9:00 - Discussion and Q&A

2 0:15 - Event closes

Full address: The Knowledge Centre, British Library, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB

More about our speakers:

Mariette DiChristina is dean of Boston University’s College of Communication and professor of the practice in journalism. Before arriving at BU in 2019, DiChristina was the first female editor-in-chief and executive vice president of Scientific American, as well as executive vice president, Magazines Division, of its publisher, Springer Nature. In that capacity, she also oversaw the journalists for the journal Nature’s magazine, as well as the Nature Research custom content and publishing groups.

An elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, she serves on the advisory committee of Climate Crossroads for the U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine; the Academies’ Standing Committee on Advancing Science Communication Research and Practice; on the executive board for WBUR; on the Practice and Science of Civic Science Advisory Committee for the Civic Science Fellows program; and the board of trustees for Society for Science, publisher of Science News. For the past several years, DiChristina has also chaired the Steering Group for the “Top 10 Emerging Technologies” for the World Economic Forum.

Previously, DiChristina was president of the National Association of Science Writers and executive editor of Popular Science. She also enjoyed working with students as a part-time associate professor and visiting scholar in the graduate Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting Program at New York University and as a science writer in residence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Mark Miodownik is the UCL Professor of Materials & Society. He received his Ph.D in turbine jet engine alloys from Oxford University, and has worked as a materials engineer in the USA, Ireland and the UK. For more than twenty years he has championed materials science research that links to the arts and humanities, medicine, and society. This culminated in the establishment of the UCL Institute of Making, where he is a director and runs the research programme.

Mark also recently set up the Plastic Waste Innovation Hub to carry our research into solving the environmental catastrophe of plastic waste dealing with topics such as biodegradable plastics and product reuse and repairability. Mark is the multi-award winning author of New York Times bestselling book Stuff Matters. He regularly presents BBC TV and radio programmes on materials science and engineering. In 2014 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. In 2018 he was awarded an MBE for services to materials science, engineering and broadcasting.

Melanie Brown is an award-winning science journalist who is the Series Producer for BBC Radio’s The Infinite Monkey Cage. She served as the Civic Science Storytelling Fellow based at the University of Oregon’s Center for Science Communication Research in 2022-23 as part of a Fulbright Scholarship supported by the Rita Allen Foundation. Here she also joined the Rita Allen Civic Science Fellows programme.

During her Fulbright year Melanie embedded herself at the University of Oregon to meet scientists, communities and journalists and explore how the civic science media landscape is developing in the US. Here, she reported on Wildfires in Oregon, developed and taught a Civic Science Storytelling course at the University as well as worked alongside students and the Latinx community to develop science programming in Spanish for regional rural audiences.

Melanie has spent the past decade working for the BBC in factual programming with a focus on making science documentaries for the BBC World Service. She is passionate about telling complex science stories in ways that are accessible to a broad audience and foster engagement with the most pressing scientific, environmental, and health issues.

Clio Heslop (Head of Policy, Partnerships, and Impact at the British Science Association) leads the BSA’s policy and stakeholder engagement team working to influence organisations from policy, business, civil society, media, research, and education sectors. She is interested in making science institutions and spaces more inclusive to all, and in involving people in decision-making about science. Clio manages various BSA policy programmes, including work on public attitudes, youth voice, diversity and inclusion in STEM, science education, and community participation.

As 2020 US-UK Civic Science Fellow, supported by the US-UK Fulbright Commission, and hosted (remotely) at the University of Texas at Austin, Clio researched partnerships between science and civil society organisations, the landscape for public engagement training, and US public attitudes to science communication and political decision-making. She was also on an advisory group for a national study on ‘Americans’ Motivations for and Barriers to Engaging with Science’. Clio’s time working with UT Austin coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 Biden-Trump election.

Clio has worked in a variety of other science policy and communications roles over the past 12 years, including at UCL and at Springer Nature.

Connecting Science with People: the Power of Civic Science