From the global politics of scientific advice to solar home systems in Kenya. From the GM crops debate to living with climate uncertainty in India. The STEPS Centre and our partners around…
Best of STEPS 2013: Science and technology for development
Call for abstracts: ‘Innovation for social inclusion’, 4s/ESOCITE meeting (August 2014)
STEPS member Adrian Smith (convenor of our Grassroots Innovation project) is co-organising a session on ‘innovation for social inclusion’ at the ESOCITE/Society for Social Studies of Science (4s) annual meeting…
Grassroots innovations: special issue of ‘Global Environmental Change’
The latest issue of the research journal Global Environmental Change is dedicated to the topic of grassroots innovation for sustainability. The special issue contains six original research articles which focus…
Who knows best when creating technology?
What attempts are being made to ‘improve reality’ and who are the real beneficiaries of bids to mould the future to the vision of a few, powerful actors? STEPS Centre…
Don’t believe the hype: Who authors our futures?
A chain of technological developments set into motion by chemist and physicist Gordon Moore more than 45 years ago is still resonating in technological choices being made today, says Justin Pickard, a…
Building pathways of pro-poor energy access
The misconception that developing countries can plump for either increasing access to energy, or low carbon development, but not both, is exploded in a paper presented by Dr Rob Byrne,…
Citizens and science in a greener China
As China and the UK seek to collaborate more closely in science and innovation, there are lessons they can share about how to govern and debate new technologies, write Adrian…
GM crops and biotechnology
GM crops, Golden Rice and other related technologies polarise opinion: they are the solution to the global food crisis; or they are ‘frankenfoods’ causing irreversible environmental harm. Concerns about poverty,…
Against ‘monocultures’ in agriculture and knowledge
Faced with the undeniable fact of hunger in developing countries, ‘sustainable intensification’ has been claimed as a science-led solution to food security. In an article for SciDev.Net, Prof Brian Wynne…
Responsibility at the Science-Publics-Policy Interface: What I learnt at the 2013 Science in Public Conference
The village of Onna, after the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake. Photo: Darkroom_Daze (Flickr) by Stephen WhitfieldDPhil Student, Institute of Development Studies This year’s ‘Science in Public’ conference hosted by Nottingham University…