The Principal Investigator (PI) will address questions that have arisen as a result of a shift by the scientific community towards engaging with complex problems that span two or more distinct realm; in this case, the issue is climate change, which spans environmental and social realms. Key questions to be addressed concern the challenges faced by scientists engaged in work on this problem, and the character of the associated shift in the norms within the scientific community. The PI will address these questions by focusing on several carefully chosen case studies of scientists and organizations at the leading edge of these transformations. The PI will use multiple methods in doing so, including in-depth, semi-structured oral history interviews with scientists, and archival research into the development of their organizations and research projects. The results of this project will be an oral history website and a monograph of case studies to document this transformative period in science.
Intellectual Merit
The proposed work will contribute to the growing body of research into science and civic engagement by documenting stories of scientists themselves. In investigating how current scientific issues (such as climate change) are engendering a shift in science practice, this project will also increase our understanding of how the scientific problems of an age influence the evolution of scientific social and institutional norms, and how (in turn) those norms affect the way scientific problems are studied. The information and products gained from this research will be instructive to other scientists, to sociologists of science and to STS scholars.
Broader Impacts :
This project will serve to inform policy at academic institutions and to guide efforts to train a new generation of scientists who plan to engage in work that addresses the scientific and social complexities of climate change. Additionally, the proposed work will enhance our understanding of how to facilitate communication between scientists, policy makers, community members and other stakeholders, which could in turn improve research and policy effectiveness. The site of this work is a historically black college liberal arts college in New Orleans, and undergraduates are included in the research plan as research assistants, meaning that this project will contribute to the training of underrepresented minority students in science and social science research and encourage underrepresented minority students to pursue graduate training in those fields. The oral history website, housed at the work site, will serve to provide a deeper understanding to the New Orleans community, particularly communities of color, about the science of climate change and about science in general.
