Sigfrid participates at the 4S/EASST conference with her paper: GMOs and complex collectivity: a discourse analysis of public debate on Norway’s Gene Technology Act
The conference was supposed to be in Prague, but due to the corona travel restriction it will be a virtual event. More information here.
Annual ReWrite meeting with research team and advisors.
The meeting is cancelled due to corona travel restrictions.
Sigfrid, Trine and Anne will have a skype-meeting with advisors Sarah Hartley and Ana Delgado to discuss WP2.
Post doc. Sigfrid Kjeldaas presents her work in WP2 at GenØk.
GenØk Science Forum:
Visiting researcher Christopher Preston and Trine Antonsen present at GenØks Science Forum. During Christopher’s visit (4 weeks in november), they draft an academic article on the environmental ethics of genome editing. (WP1). Here they will present and discuss their work-in-progress: Integrity and Agency: Negotiation New Forms of Human-Nature Relations in Biotechnology. Lunch is served between the presentation and the Q&A.
Visiting researcher at GenØk will hold a guest lecture at the Department of Philosophy at UiT. The title is “Gender and Technology”. The lecture is open for all!
Abstract: Gender is relevant in the development pathways of a number of today’s powerful emerging technologies. In this presentation, we will look at climate engineering and gene drives in order to consider where gender appears and why it matters in each case. Some of these claims will be nothing more than empirical claims about the demographics of those involved in the technology’s development. Others will be conceptual claims about patterns of thinking and ways of conceptualizing the systems into which the technology intervenes. These conceptual claims are likely to have application beyond the two technologies in question. I will conclude with some very basic normative recommendations about how to respond to the presence of gender in technology.
Trine and Anne participate at the European Society for Agricultural and Food Ethics conference in Tampere, Finland.
Trine presents the paper “The rewriting of human/nature relations through genome editing”, co-written with Erik Lundestad and Fern Wickson.
Anne presents “Sustainability and societal utility in nonsafety assessment of gene-edited organisms”.
Both papers are included as chapters in the book, Sustainable governance and management of food systems: ethical perspectives, Wageningen Press, 2019.
Engaging the public when biotech goes wild
Public lecture by ReWrite project partner Jason Delborne, North Carolina State University
ABSTRACT
New gene-editing techniques and strategies offer novel possibilities for interventions in public health and environmental conservation. Recent studies by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have addressed the emerging science of gene drives and the potential for biotechnology to address forest health. Jason Delborne, Associate Professor of Science, Policy, and Society from North Carolina State University, served on two of these committees. He will share the reports' findings on the importance of engaging communities, stakeholders, and broader publics throughout the research and development phases of emerging biotechnologies. As an example, Delborne will also discuss his research focused on the genetically engineered American chestnut tree, proposed to restore a species decimated by an introduced blight in the early 1900s. In particular, he will describe research with indigenous communities in the historic range of the American chestnut, a workshop that brought diverse stakeholders in conversation with the genetic engineers, and related questions about the ethical dimensions of restoration with a biotech organism.
Before the lecture, Trine Antonsen will introduce the NFR Samkul project ReWrite (2018-2022) and Arinze Okoli (GenØk) will give a brief introduction to genome editing techniques. The lecture will be followed by a Q&A.
Meeting at GenØk, Tromsø for all project partners and advisors.
Public lecture by ReWrite project partner Jane Calvert, Edinburgh
Abstract: In this presentation I discuss the Synthetic Aesthetics project, which paired six artists and designers with six synthetic biologists, and tasked them with investigating design in synthetic biology. What came out of it was a diverse collection of work, including an architecturally-inspired exploration of how biology ‘computes’ through shape and form, a reflection on synthetic biology from the humbling perspective of geological time, and an experiment in cheese-making, using bacteria that grow on human skin. As a social scientist on the project, I found that working with artists and designers enriched my research by extending my critical capacities for engaging with synthetic biology and its promised futures.