Author Archives: Dominic Berry

The history of DNA synthesis – a workshop on history for Synthetic Biology and beyond

One way to give a history to something like synthetic biology is to reduce it down to a narrower collection of parts, and then produce a history of the origins and development of those parts. Each part that gets followed … Continue reading

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An evil person’s guide to doing public engagement badly

A few weeks ago Deborah Scott and I were invited to participate in an interdisciplinary workshop organised by the Eastern ARC on synthetic biology and society. For my presentation I basically gave Claire Marris’ paper ‘The Construction of Imaginaries of … Continue reading

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What about the frogs?: Reflections on ‘Community and Identity in the Techno-Sciences’ workshop

Our post this month comes from Chris Mellingwood, a PhD student affiliated with and contributing to the Engineering Life project. You can contact Chris on c.r.mellingwood [at] sms.ed.ac.uk. The sight of un-melted dirty snow on an urban street may not seem … Continue reading

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Pablo Schyfter article, ‘A nature with their nature’, in LA+ issue on simulation

This month Dr Pablo Schyfter has featured in LA+ (Landscape Architecture Plus). You can find the full issue and Dr Schyfter’s article here. For those without access to this journal, we upload the final draft here. Schyfter, 2016, A nature … Continue reading

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The Jurassic Park Effect: the stories we tell when deciding how to govern emerging science

By Deborah Scott I recently took part in the Shuffle Festival, a 24 hour festival in London’s Mile End with the theme of “Gods + Idols + Lights.” In a glade nestled among tall trees and Victorian tombstones, the Shuffle … Continue reading

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‘Doing Engineering’: Engineering Life’s first workshop

This week Pablo Schyfter explains the motivations and outcomes of our first project workshop. On Friday, 3 June, 2016, the ‘Engineering Life’ project held the first of its experimental interdisciplinary workshops. These events form a crucial part of our project; they … Continue reading

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EVENT: Philosophy of biology meets social studies of biosciences. Perspectives on living organisms

Tuesday 24th May 2016 This workshop is sponsored by the ERC Consolidator grant Perspectival realism. Science, Knowledge, and Truth from a Human Vantage Point (PI: Michela Massimi, Philosophy, Edinburgh) in collaboration with colleagues in Science, Technology, and Innovation Studies at … Continue reading

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Engineering HPS and STS: the (Re)Engineering Biology workshop, Pittsburgh

As those of you who have come across this blog before will know, we are an interdisciplinary group of researchers engaged in an investigation of biological engineering, all the while probing the larger subject of engineering itself. It is exciting … Continue reading

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CRISPR in the history of science and intellectual property

Those of you with even a glancing interest in the biosciences will have noticed the flurry of high profile articles relating to the patenting of CRISPR-Cas9. Now that the USPTO has agreed to an interference proceeding, the range of such … Continue reading

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Following the herd: paradoxes in the social study of synthetic biology

This week we are very pleased to feature a post from Chris Mellingwood, a researcher based here at STIS associated with the Engineering Life project. There are two motivations for this post. First, to introduce myself as a second year … Continue reading

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