Members of the NISE Net Program group and faculty and students at the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University are teaming up to demonstrate and discuss potential collaborations between the social science community and the informal science education community at a conference of the Society for the Study of Nanoscience and Emerging Technologies in Seattle in early September.
In 2005 when the NISE Net was launched, the NSF also funded several centers to focus on societal implications of nanotechnology – one headquartered at the University of South Carolina, one at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and one at Arizona State University. These three centers are all independent and each has partners of its own, but there are also a few networks designed to build connections between the researchers, including a new organization called the S.NET, the Society for the Study of Nanoscience and Emerging Technologies, and its first conference will take place in Seattle right after Labor Day, September 8-11.
Several activities at the S.NET conference will explore ways for science museums to partner with social science researchers. One of the most visible will be an activity coordinated for the NISE Net by of the Sciencenter in Ithaca. Rae head’s the NISE Net’s program team. She’s worked with Jamey Wetmore at ASU’s Center for Nanotechnology in Society to organize a showcase of activities at the Pacific Science Center on Labor Day and at the conference’s opening reception on Tuesday, September 8. The focus will be cart demos that address societal implications of nanotechnology in some way. Jamey and his colleague Ira Bennet have incorporated projects in which students develop public demos about nanotechnology into two classes they teach at ASU.
There will also be a round table discussion during the conference about including social science content in the work we do in science museums, and on ways in which social scientists and science museums can collaborate to build upon the work of each other.
I think there are great opportunities collaborations between the social science community and science museums. Several NISE Net colleagues and I started a discussion of this at the October 2008 conference of the Association of Science Technology Centers and we’ll pick that conversation up again at this year’s conference (Oct. 30 – Nov 2). The current issue of Museums and Social Issues includes an article I wrote about some of the possibilities, and several other interesting articles on "Science and Civic Life".