Colloquium: Creative Approaches in Research Writing, on 7 September

Joint AMC/MUSTS colloquium: Creative Approaches in Research Writing
Speakers: Anna Harris, Susan Kelly, Sally Wyatt and Caoilinn Hughes

When: Wednesday 7 September 2016, 15.30-17.00 (followed by drinks)
Where: Attic, Soiron building, Grote Gracht 80-82

To mark the publication of CyberGenetics: Health genetics and new media (Routledge, 2016) by Anna Harris, Sally Wyatt and Susan Kelly, AMC and the MUSTS research group will host a symposium on September 7th, which our FASoS colleagues are warmly invited to. The presentation will be followed by a roundtable discussion, where we hope to open up a conversation across faculties and research centres on the topic of alternative/innovative approaches in research writing.

Through its mixed and playful methodology and its broad theoretical framing, CyberGenetics demonstrates how the public view of genetic testing and personal genomics—as seen through social media and the Internet—revolves around several explosive axes: privacy vs. exposure, fear vs. hope, participation vs. exploitation. There is a turn to the imagination presented in the book’s conclusion, where via poems and speculative fictional imaginaries of cybergenetic futures, the authors suggest an alternative exploration of the book’s themes. Harking back to the radical reflexivity more common in STS in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the book presents (semi-)fictional accounts for how DTC genetic testing might develop. As presented in the seven principles for doing research about emergent technoscience, these accounts appeal to playful and imaginative speculations about futures. These fictions reflect on the possibilities for a world where genetics not only goes online but where digital technologies and scientific knowledges are becoming ever more intertwined, opening new spaces for relations between technology users, bodies and commercial companies; reshaping meanings of trust and participation; and shifting identities and roles and places of interaction.

The writers (Anna Harris, Susan Kelly, Sally Wyatt and poet Caoilinn Hughes) will present excerpts from the book and discuss the rationale behind this creative approach and its effectiveness. We would love to hear from colleagues who have employed creative approaches in their own research writing in the roundtable discussion and over drinks afterwards.

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