iHuman at #SIP2018

This was a great opportunity to engage with Science and Technology Studies researchers and to showcase some of iHuman research. Warren Pearce’s panel brought together scholar-activists to discuss the ‘USS Briefs’ which considered the impact of activist social science in public in response to the recent UCU Pensions strike.Dan gave a paper entitled ‘Provocations in Critical Disability Studies’ which drew on a recent piece of writing that he has done with Kirsty Liddiard, Rebecca Lawthom and Katherine Runswick-Cole. This introduced to the assembled Science and Technology Studies delegates some of the pressing theoretical and political issues facing critical disability studies scholarship. Stevienna de Saille’s ‘Robots in imaginaries of care: a pilot study using Lego Serious Play’ explored some current work reporting on a pilot study using Lego Serious Play as a focus group method for a comparative exploration of how care of humans by robots is imagined by various stakeholder groups, including carers, social workers, policymakers, roboticists and various publics. While Paul Martin’s paper ‘Hope spring eternal: claims-based policy making in the UK bioeconomy’ review the evidence marshalled in support on this policy priority in a number of official documents over the last decade and argue that the main driver has been support for a ‘genomic imaginary’.