Crossing Disciplinary Boundaries: Experiments in Public Engagement

Presented by: Prof Sally Shuttleworth (Oxford University)

Date: Thursday 31 July 2025
Time: 12-1pm
Location: Online via Zoom and in-person at the SCA Writer's Studio (Level 6, Michie Building)


Abstract

The seminar will focus on public engagement activities for two large projects Sally ran which crossed boundaries between Science, Medicine, and Literary Studies, ‘Diseases of Modern Life: Nineteenth-Century Perspectives’ and ‘Constructing Scientific Communities: Citizen Science in the 19th and 21st Centuries’.  As a team, we worked with artists, theatre practitioners, and museums, as well as citizen science communities.  The talk will consider the rewards, and also the challenges, of such work, and also the possibilities offered by citizen science, including manuscript transcription for historical documents. 


Presenter

Sally Shuttleworth is Senior Research Fellow at St Anne’s College, and the English Faculty, University of Oxford, where she was previously Head of the Humanities Division. Her research is on the interface between science, medicine, and the humanities, particularly in the nineteenth century. Her books include Charlotte Brontë and Victorian Psychology (1996) and The Mind of the Child: Child Development in Literature, Science and Medicine, 1840-1900 (2010).  Between 2014 and 2019, she ran two large research projects, Diseases of Modern Life: Nineteenth-Century Perspectives (ERC) and Constructing Scientific Communities: Citizen Science in the 19th and 21st Centuries (AHRC), the latter in partnership with the Natural History Museum, London, the Royal Society, and the Royal College of Surgeons of England. Joint research works from these projects include Anxious Times: Medicine and Modernity in Nineteenth-Century Britain (2019); Sleep and Stress: Past and Present, a Special Issue of the Royal Society Journal, Interface Focus (2020); Progress and Pathology: Medicine and Culture in the Nineteenth Century (2020), and Science Periodicals in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Constructing Scientific Communities (2020).

She has recently completed a book on travel for health, In Quest of a Cure: Literary and Medical Cultures of the Health Resort. It will be published in 2026 by Oxford University Press.


 

About Research Seminar and Workshop Series

 


School of Communication and Arts Research Seminar Series

The research seminar and workshop series occur each semester, each with a different topic and guest speaker from UQ or otherwise.

Friday, 28 February
12-1pm

Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the
SCA Writer's Studio
(Level 6, Michie)

Generative Hate

Dr Luke Munn and Meg Herrmann

Friday, 21 March
12-1pm

Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the
SCA Writer's Studio
(Level 6, Michie)

Close Encounters of the Hermeneutic Kind: UFOs as More-than-Human Media

Dr Adam Dodd

Friday, 11 April
12-1pm

Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the
SCA Writer's Studio
(Level 6, Michie)

Indigenous and Local Knowledge Systems and Community Radio in India

A/Prof Elske van de Fliert
A/Prof Pradip Thomas
Treesa Reena John (University of Hyderabad)
Vamsi Krishna Pothuru (University of Hyderabad)

Friday, 23 May
12-1pm

Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the
SCA Writer's Studio
(Level 6, Michie)

The Drama Of Anthropological History

Michael Eaton

Friday, 6 June
12-1pm

Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the
SCA Writer's Studio
(Level 6, Michie)

Video, Bias, Action. Mitigating Cognitive Biases through Role-Play Video Scenarios

Dr Lemi Baruh

Thursday, 31 July
12-1pm

Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the
SCA Writer's Studio
(Level 6, Michie)

Crossing Disciplinary Boundaries: Experiments in Public EngagementProf Sally Shuttleworth (Oxford University)

Friday, 8 August
12-1pm

Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the
SCA Writer's Studio
(Level 6, Michie)

Designing engagement for coral reef rescueA/Prof Elske van de Fliert and Dr Skye Doherty

 

Venue

Online via Zoom and in-person at the SCA Writer's Studio (Level 6, Michie Building): https://uqz.zoom.us/j/87071969561