Leeds HPS: 2-year Postdoctoral Research Fellowship
UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS
CENTRE FOR HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science
2-YEAR POSTDOC IN HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF GENETICS
Applications are sought for a two-year postdoctoral
research fellowship linked to a new project on the relationship between
genetics teaching and genetic determinism. The application deadline is
Thursday 9 August 2012. Interviews of shortlisted candidates will
take place the following Thursday, with the successful candidate beginning
on 1 September 2012.
FURTHER
DETAILS
For
more than a century, the teaching of genetics has been organized around concepts
originating with Gregor Mendel. But, in the genomics age, is
Mendelian pedagogy still fit for purpose? What are the
alternatives? And what sorts of attitudes and aptitudes do different
kinds of pedagogies promote in students of the science of inheritance?
These questions form the basis of a new
two-year interdisciplinary research project at the University of Leeds
between Prof. Gregory Radick (HPS) and Dr Jenny Lewis
(Education). Applications are now sought for a
Postdoctoral Research Fellow who will be centrally involved in all aspects
of the project, including the design, delivery and evaluation of a
non-Mendelian genetics curriculum.
On
the HPS side, the project arises from Prof. Radick’s research into the
debates surrounding the emergence of Mendelian genetics in the early years of
the twentieth century, in particular the views of the most profound biological
critic of the new “Mendelism”, W. F. R. Weldon (1860-1906), and the possibility
that, had Weldon lived, the science of heredity might have developed
differently, with far more emphasis on the environmental conditioning of
hereditary effects (a pervasive theme for Weldon) than was actually the
case. On the science education side, the project intersects with Dr
Lewis’ longstanding interest in incorporating the perspectives of genomics into
the genetics curriculum in schools, and her concern (widely
shared) that the traditional stress on unrepresentative
single-gene disorders might promote genetic determinism and so undermine efforts
elsewhere in the curriculum to deny or combat the view that genes are somehow
“super” causes.
Generous
funding from the Faraday Institute, in connection with its Uses and Abuses of
Biology grants programme, will enable the project to cover costs for
several research trips by the Fellow, for the Fellow’s participation in two
international conferences, and for the hosting at Leeds of a mid-project
workshop and an end-of-project international conference, both to be organized
by the Fellow. At Leeds, the Fellow will be primarily associated with the
Centre for History and Philosophy of Science, but also with the Centre for
Studies of Science and Mathematics Education, the Centre for Medical
Humanities, and the University of Leeds Biology Education Research Group.
Further details
about the position and how to apply for it can be found at
A
recent lecture by Prof. Radick setting out the wider research context for the
project can be viewed here:
Informal
inquiries should be sent to Prof. Radick at G.M.Radick@leeds.ac.uk