Seventh SciCOM colloquium – 23 August 2022

Written by Jessica Webster (PhD) 

Presented by Jessica Webster (Stellenbosch University and Water for the Future)

This colloquium presentation explored the complexities of interdisciplinary academic research.  

Dr Webster’s background to date has straddled academia and practice-based research as a professional artist, as well as her involvement with environmental activism and social development. Her intellectual interest can be framed as a consideration of the “ethics of communication”, which she construes as a critical awareness of material which is vitally non-communicative, or, of material that is non-communicative because it can be difficult, even traumatic, for a viewer to absorb.

This perspective is of value to science communication because:

• certain science subjects like climate change are traumatic and make communication a sensitive and empathic issue in parallel with artistic concerns,
• one can speak to subject matter which is resistant to direct identification or simple communication without losing the value of that non-communicative aspect, and
• it opens the possibility of developing methodologies which integrate inter-disciplinary objectives and ultimately serve to reflect on and create platforms where public and government perceptions of social, economic, and environmental problems are understood as interdependent issues.

In the colloquium, Dr Webster explored three draft papers in various stages of the process, each of which approaches these concerns with different subject matter and priorities. Feedback on the order and reasoning behind these priorities will be much appreciated.

You can watch the recording here.