The Silences of Science

Project Team:

Principal Investigator:

Dr Felicity Mellor, Imperial College London

Co-Investigators: 

Dr Steven Webster, Imperial College London, Co-Investigator

Wellcome Collection

Award Information:

The Silences of Science is an AHRC-funded research network examining different aspects of the paradox that science depends both on prolixity and on reticence. It seeks to interrogate the assumption that open and efficient channels of communication are always of greatest benefit to science and to society. It aims to remind the research community of the creative importance of silence, of interruptions in communication, of isolation and of ‘stuckness’.

Through a series of three workshops and conferences, the research network will bring together a range of scholars – from literary studies, anthropology, legal studies, religious studies, as well as from the history and philosophy of science and science communication studies – to draw on insights from their disciplines in order to examine the role of silence within the sciences