Leadership team – CompCoRe

Jasanoff talks at the joint event organized by Thailand Institute of Justice and Harvard Institute for Global Law and Policy

Sheila Jasanoff talked about technology and surveillance in the post-Covid era to scholars from Thailand Institute of Justice and Harvard Institute for Global Law and Policy on May 5, 2022. Jasanoff’s remarks drew on the research conducted by the members of the CompCoRe project.

Jasanoff delivers the Dr. Seng Tee Lee Lecture at University of Cambridge

Sheila Jasanoff delivered the Dr. Seng Tee Lee Lecture at University of Cambridge on March 11, 2022. Titled “Democracy and Distrust after the Pandemic,” her talk explored the ways in which the Covid-19 pandemic brought into sharp focus the strengths and weaknesses of the links between science, technology and society. Situating the opposition to vaccines, masks, and other public health mandates within a framework of constitutional theory, she argued that building better after the pandemic will require an explicit engagement with the tacit rules of delegation and deliberation that underpin modern democracies. You can watch the lecture here.

Jasanoff speaks at Oxford’s Institute for Innovation and Science

Sheila Jasanoff was hosted by the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society at University of Oxford on March 9. Titled Sovereignty Unmasked: STS, the Pandemic, and Political Theory,” Jasanoff’s remarks focused on the governance regime that she calls “public health sovereignty.” She explored the rules and practices of delegation that help explain why resistance has followed divergent paths across the 16 countries included in the CompCoRe project. The talk reflected on the method of comparison as a device for illuminating STS’s contributions to political and constitutional theory.

Jasanoff gives the keynote at the OECD workshop

Sheila Jasanoff gave the keynote of the OECD Global Science Forum (GSF) workshop, Scientific advice in crises: Lessons learned from COVID-19, on March 3. The event was part of a project on mobilizing science in response to crises. Titled Comparative Covid Response: crisis, knowledge, politics, Jasanoff’s presentation outlined the CompCoRe project and its key findings. The event can be viewed here.

Jasanoff participates in the Humboldt Digital Dialogues series

Sheila Jasanoff participated in an online panel entitled “(Mis)trust in Science and Elites” on February 25. The event was organized by the American Friends of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and was part of a speaker series on Society, Science, and Policy: Lessons from the Coronavirus Pandemic. The series seeks to strengthen understanding of the changing cultural and societal context of science in the United States and other nations and explore the implications for science-based policies, scientific careers, and scientific cooperation. You can watch the event here.

Hurlbut moderates session on the “lab leak” hypothesis at STS Summer School

J. Benjamin Hurlbut moderated a panel that discussed the hypothesis that the SARS-CoV-2 virus escaped from a Wuhan biology laboratory. The session featured a mix of STS scholars, science writers, and participants in the controversy. Key issues included whether debate about the lab leak hypothesis had been prematurely brought to closure and whether it merited being reopened.

Jasanoff and Hilgartner present CompCoRe findings at Harvard’s STS Summer School

In a session on STS in the World, Jasanoff and Hilgartner discussed how country-specific social compacts express shared expectations of proper relations among citizens, the state, and experts, exploring how modern social compacts shaped national responses to the pandemic.

Jasanoff brings CompCoRe insights to conversation about climate change with Ezra Klein in New York Times Magazine

Ezra Klein interviewed Sheila Jasanoff and three other experts about what it will take to generate sustainable climate policy nationally and internationally. Jasanoff drew on CompCoRe findings to illustrate that crisis preparedness does not necessarily result in better outcomes, and urged politicians and analysts to pay closer attention to global inequality and distribution of responsibility when considering climate change policies.

Hilgartner discusses CompCoRe at the 2021 InSciTS conference

At the annual International Science of Team Science conference, Hilgartner spoke on the Social Complexities of COVID-19 through the Lens of International Research Collaborations. He summarized key CompCoRe findings and discussed the conditions that made this complex international team research possible.

Jasanoff and Hilgarner reflect on early CompCoRe findings on Verfassungsblog

Sheila Jasanoff and Stephen Hilgartner, CompCoRe co-PIs, wrote a post about the politics of pandemic responses in Verfassungsblog, an internationally-oriented blog addressing constitutional law and politics. They presented CompCoRe findings and offered an analysis of why some countries were able to enact restrictive public health policies and others were not. In considering such differences, they argued that “the analytic starting point for understanding the phenomenon of trust has to be within national political systems and not in the technocratic domains of either health or economic expertise.” Politicians should examine their national processes for integrating scientific and political consensus-building in order to determine crisis response policies, the authors urged in their conclusion.