Wise Festival - Celebrating the International Day of Women and Girls in Science

 

Learning from the science of the past to protect our futures.

The Institute for the Modelling of Socio-Environmental Transitions (IMSET) addresses one of the most significant global challenges facing humanity today: how we manage and respond to environmental change. It does this by exploring how past societies were affected by environmental change, how they responded to these challenges and, therefore, what are the most sustainable options available to present-day societies under similar pressures. Join this panel of distinguished scientists (archaeologists, palaeoecologists)  as part of the WISE Festival evening events.

Chaired by Emma Jenkins, Director of IMSET and Associate Professor, Department of Archaeology & Anthropology, Bournemouth University

 

Panel:
Nicola Whitehouse, Professor of Human-Environment Systems at Plymouth University and Senior Lecture in Archaeology at Glasgow University
Erika Guttmann-Bond, Author of Reinventing Sustainability: How Archaeology Can Save the Planet
Fiona Coward, Principal Academic in Archaeological Sciences, Bournemouth University

 

Join us next time to find out more about – Voices of Science

 

WISE (WOMEN IN SCIENCE EVENTS) Festival, British Library 11 February 2020

 

The British Library is joining in the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, celebrating and raising the voices of women in science with a one day mini festival.  Our events and talks will encourage you to laugh, sing and think.  Every few days this blog will look in more detail at the participants and their involvement with the event.

 

https://www.bl.uk/events/wise-festival

Wise Festival - Celebrating the International Day of Women and Girls in Science

We are delighted that Helen Arney will be the MC for the evening festival.

Science presenter, comedian and geek songstress Helen Arney has appeared on TV, radio and in theatres across the world.
You might have seen her explaining physics while riding a rollercoaster for BBC Coast, singing the periodic table on Channel 4 News, hosting Outrageous Acts Of Science on Discovery or smashing wine glasses with the power of her voice in Festival of the Spoken Nerd.

 

 

 

We can’t wait to see what she brings to the Festival!

 

Photo credit: Alex Brenner

 

WISE (WOMEN IN SCIENCE EVENTS) Festival, British Library 11 February 2020.

The British Library is joining in the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, celebrating and raising the voices of women in science with a one day mini festival.  Our events and talks will encourage you to laugh, sing and think.  Every few days this blog will look in more detail at the participants and their involvement with the event.

 

https://www.bl.uk/events/wise-festival

Wise Festival - Celebrating the International Day of Women and Girls in Science

Dr Rachel Edwards-Stuart is a renowned Food Scientist and Flavour Expert. She runs a selection of unique and bespoke events around the Science of Flavour and Gastronomy. Since graduating from Cambridge University, Rachel has trained as a chef in Paris, gained a PhD sponsored by Heston Blumenthal, lectured around Europe, appeared on TV and in the national press, set up the London Gastronomy Seminars, taught science to chefs, developed over 100 gluten free products, and helped to stabilise a 5 tonne chocolate waterfall. (To read more about Rachel, see about)

In her break-out session Rachel demonstrates how what you see, hear, touch, smell and taste affects flavour. Learn about the science of the senses, and discover more about how you taste in this interactive journey through flavour perception.

Join us next time to find out more about Back to the Future.

WISE (WOMEN IN SCIENCE EVENTS) Festival, British Library 11 February 2020.

The British Library is joining in the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, celebrating and raising the voices of women in science with a one day mini festival.  Our events and talks will encourage you to laugh, sing and think.  Every few days this blog will look in more detail at the participants and their involvement with the event.

https://www.bl.uk/events/wise-festival

The 22nd of January is the birthday of the early modern lawyer, politician, and philosopher Francis Bacon, later Viscount St Alban (1561-1626). For the purposes of this blog, he is most famous for his contributions to the gradual evolution of scientific thinking, mainly expressed in his book Novum Organum, first published in Latin in 1620. We hold two copies of the first edition, published by John Bill. One is at shelfmark C.54.F.16, and has a bookplate in the name of John Bentinck, and the second is at 535.k.8.

Title page of the original 1620 edition of Novum Organum

Novum Organum was intended to be part of Bacon's life's work, The Great Instauration, which would have been a multi-volume work summarising practically all knowledge that existed during his lifetime and suggesting paths for further enquiry. He died long before completing it, although some sections of it dealing with particular subjects existed in manuscript and were published after his death. The book argues for knowledge of the natural world to be developed by collection and juxtaposition of experimental observations, refraining from forming hypotheses too early and attempting to force the information to fit them. While mature scientific method views hypotheses as more significant than Bacon did, his thought was an important reaction to earlier classical and medieval ideas about the natural world, which were based mainly on intellectual speculation.

Novum Organum is also important for its discussion of "idols", or fallacies and habits of thought which interfere with rational thought and prevent people from reaching correct conclusions. Bacon defines four types of these. "Idols of the tribe" are flaws of reasoning which are almost universal among human minds. "Idols of the cave" (an allusion to Plato's Allegory of the Cave) are biases and pre-occupations specific to each individual person. "Idols of the marketplace" are confusions created by the imprecision of language to describe the world, such as when people's understanding of the technical meaning of a word in science is confused by its everyday meaning. Finally, "Idols of the theatre" are mistaken ideas that persist because of their historic prestige and acceptance by authoritative figures.

It is not clear how much experimentation Bacon actually did. The amusing story spread by the memoirist John Aubrey that he died from pneumonia caused by an experiment to see if a chicken could be preserved by stuffing it with snow is nowadays doubted. His unfinished Utopian book New Atlantis was extremely influential in its depiction of "Saloman's House", possibly the first depiction of a scientific institute, which heavily influenced the founding of the Royal Society, just over thirty years after Bacon's death.

Wise Festival - Celebrating the International Day of Women and Girls in Science

The WISE Festival is in particularly excited to announce Professor Sunetra Gupta as its closing speaker. We will be drawing on Sunetra’s unique perspective combining her scientific work on the evolution of pathogens with her experience as an award winning novelist and translator, to discuss science as a part of our culture and not something that is separate, reserved only for scientists and independent of other human endeavour.  How can we create new links and ways of thinking that can enrich our lives beyond the perceived boundaries of science and arts? Do scientific and literary narratives have anything in common? Can science be beautiful? A perfect reflection at the British Library where different fields of knowledge sit alongside each other, ready for new connections to be made by anyone curious and creative.

Sunetra is an acclaimed novelist, essayist and scientist. In October 2012 her fifth novel, So Good in Black, was longlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. In 2009 she was named as the winner of the Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award for her scientific achievements. Sunetra is Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at Oxford University's Department of Zoology, having graduated in 1987 from Princeton University and received her PhD from the University of London in 1992. Sunetra was born in Calcutta in 1965 and wrote her first works of fiction in Bengali. She is an accomplished translator of the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore.

See more about Sunetra

Join us next time to find out more about our second plenary speaker Danielle George.

WISE (WOMEN IN SCIENCE EVENTS) Festival, British Library 11 February 2020

The British Library is joining in the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, celebrating and raising the voices of women in science with a one day mini festival.  Our events and talks will encourage you to laugh, sing and think.  Every few days this blog will look in more detail at the participants and their involvement with the event.

https://www.bl.uk/events/wise-festival

The British Library is happy to help promote the CILIP Health Libraries Group annual conference, which will be held at Aviemore in Scotland on 23rd and 24th July 2020. The conference is one of the main events of the year for healthcare librarians, and is aimed at librarians in healthcare organisations and universities, as well as anyone else with a connection to the health sector. Accomodation is included in the booking and an early bird discount is available until 27th March.

The British Library is joining in the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, celebrating and raising the voices of women in science with a one day mini festival. Our events and talks will encourage you to laugh, sing and think. Every few days this blog will look in more detail at the participants and their involvement with the event.

From 1pm drop in to our free Entrance Hall sessions, including fun scientific presentations, hands-on activities and a chance to create your own (bio)selfie using the bacteria swabbed from your cheek. There’s something for all ages and levels of science knowledge. See the full list of activities here.Then join us for an evening of talks to hear from women about their experiences of working in the sciences. This is a ticketed event and tickets can be purchased from our website.

The British Library holds one of the most comprehensive national science collections in the world, ranging from ancient manuscripts grappling to understand different aspects of the world, prior to the development of science as we know it today, to the latest scientific publications deposited at the Library through the electronic legal deposit every day. The British Library preserves the UK scientific record, supports scientific research and enables access to science for all, which includes supporting equality and diversity in science. During 2020 the Library’s exhibition Unfinished Business: The Fight for Women's Rights will be looking into the struggle for women’s rights in all walks of life which includes an ongoing struggle for equality in all areas of science, technology and engineering. The WISE Festival is an opportunity to start our reflection on women’s rights and to celebrate the achievements of women in science in a way that we hope will be fun, inspirational and thought-provoking.

Join us next time to find out more about Sunetra Gupta.

WISE (WOMEN IN SCIENCE EVENTS) Festival, British Library 11 February 2020.
www.bl.uk/events/wise-festival