"Stories About Science" Symposium, Manchester, 4-5 June 2015
We are now in a golden age for science in entertainment. Academy Award winning films such as Gravity and The Theory of Everything, and television ratings titans like The Big Bang Theory have proven that science–based entertainment products can be both critically acclaimed and financially successful. In fact, many high profile scientific organizations including the US National Academy of Sciences and the Wellcome Trust in the UK now believe that science communication can, and perhaps should, be both informative and entertaining. These groups have embraced movies and television as legitimate vehicles for science communication by developing initiatives to facilitate scientific involvement in the production of films and television programs. Science communication scholarship on entertainment media has been slow to catch up with the enthusiasm shown by these scientific organizations, as science communication studies of science in mass media still predominantly focus on news media.
This Wellcome Trust-funded two-day symposium brings together scholars from across disciplines to explore the communication of science through entertainment media in order to uncover new ways of approaching, understanding, and theorizing about this topic. Our exciting range of speakers will explore science communication and entertainment media from a variety of disciplinary and global perspectives as it is practiced and experienced by a diverse array of publics. Plenary speakers include science consultant Kevin Grazier (Gravity; Battlestar Galactica; Defiance) and television creator/producer Stephen Gallagher (Eleventh Hour; The Forgotten; Silent Witness).
The event will run from Thursday 4 to Friday 5 June 2015 and is organized by the Science and Entertainment Lab research group within the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at the University of Manchester, comprised of David A. Kirby, William R. Macauley, and Amy C. Chambers. There is no cost for attending the symposium, but spaces are limited. Please contact the organizers if you are interested in attending or if you would like further details storiesaboutscience@manchester.ac.uk. Further information can be found here:http://www.chstm.manchester.ac.uk/newsandevents/conferences/storiesaboutscience