Dr Rosemary Robins
Dr Rosemary Robins has a BA (hons) and a PhD from the School of Science and Technology Studies, University of New South Wales. Her research and teaching is in Science and Technology Studies; the sociology of risk, science policy and regulatory science, and the public understanding of science, particularly as they relate to biotechnology, environmental issues, genetics and medicine.
She is coordinator for the MA (Science, Communication & Society)
Current Research:
My research focuses on the public understanding of science, the sociology of risk and the regulation and governance of science and technology. In particular I am interested in how public attitudes and policy responses to developments in gene technology and environmental management are co-produced and generative of particular science-society relations. My work is theoretically informed by actor-network theory and related analytical perspectives within science and technology studies and by the risk society thesis.
Current Research Projects
Social Lives of Genetically Modified Organisms
This project writes biographies of four genetically modified organisms that have most profoundly challenged us: E.coli K12, Oncomouse, Flavr Savr tomato, and GM canola. The central aim in tracing each organism's biography is to analyse co-emergent transformations in laboratory practice, boundaries of regulation, scope of patent law and conventions of trade and agriculture and to propose a novel account of what makes genetically modified organisms controversial. This project interrogates the relationship between science, its governance and citizenship and in doing so contributes to three important areas of scholarship in the field of science and technology studies: the study of scientific objects, the relationship between science and governance, and the public understanding of science.
Science and Citizenship: Democracy in the Age of Science-Mediated Risk [with Janet McCalman, Don Garden, John Cash, Brian Finlayson and Roger Jones] Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage grant 2005 - 2000: $216,592.
This project consists of two related parts. One is a history of the Goulburn Valley, Victoria, as a man-made rural environment, which is led by Professor Janet McCalman and Associate Professor Don Garden. The other led by Rosemary Robins and John Cash is a sociology that focuses on how individuals in the Goulburn Valley engage with expert scientific advice, particularly that related to climate change. The questions addressed in this part of the project are: how do citizens engage in decision-making where complex science and technology are integral to the problem and the solution. How do people respond to expertise, particularly contested expertise, and how is local expertise and local knowledge actively incorporated into decision-making about the impacts of a complex scientific problem.
Contact details:
Rm 209 Old Quad
The University of Melbourne
VIC 3010 Australia
T: (03) 8344 8872
E: rmrobins@unimelb.edu.au
Publications:
Recent Publications
Robins, R., (2006), “Gene Technology and its Citizen Subjects”, Australian Journal of Emerging Technologies and Society, 4(1), pp.45 -59.
Robins, R., (2005), 'Biomedical Innovation or Bioethical Precaution: The Stem Cell Debate in Australia" in W. Bender, C. Hauskeller, A. Manzei (eds.,). Crossing Borders: Cultural, religious and political differences concerning stem cell research, Munster, Agenda Verlag.
Robins, R. & Metcalfe, S., (2004), 'Intergrating Genetics as Practices of Primary Care' in Social Science and Medicine, 59, pp.223-233.
Metcalfe, S., Hurworth, R., Newstead, J. & Robins, R., (2002), 'A Needs Assessment Study of Genetics Education for General Practitioners in Australia', Genetics in Medicine 4 (2), March/April, pp. 71-77.
Robins, R., (2002), 'The Realness of Risk: Gene Technology in Germany' in Social Studies of Science, 32 (1), February 2002, pp. 1-29.
Robins, R., (2001), 'Overburdening Risk: Policy Frameworks and the Public Uptake of Gene Technology' in Public Understanding of Science, 10 (1), pp. 19-36.
Hurworth, R., Robins, R. and Metcalfe, S., (2000), Genetics Education for GPs in Victoria: A Needs Assessment, Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, Victoria.
Recent Reviews
Robins, R., (2005), Review of Rob White (ed.,), Controversies in Environmental Sociology, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne (2004), in Historical Records of Australian Science 16 (1), pp.120-122.
Robins, R., (2003), The rDNA debate - from the Inside [review of Donald, S. Fredrickson, The Recombinant DNA Controversy: A Memoir. Science, Politics, and the Public Interest 1974-1981. AMS Press, 2001], Metascience 12 (1): 63-65.
Robins, R., (2002), The Media is not the Message, [review of S. Hornig-Priest, A Grain of Truth] Metascience 11: 216-219
Robins, R., (2000), Review of R.L. Numbers and J. Stenhouse (eds.), Disseminating Darwinism: The Role of Place, Race, Religion, and Gender, Cambridge U.P. 2000, in New Zealand Journal of History 34 (2): 304-305.
Robins, R., (1999), 'Public and Popular Representations of "Frankenscience"', [Essay Review: Jon Turney, Frankenstein's Footsteps: Science, Genetics, and Popular Culture, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998] in Social Studies of Science 29 (2): 295-301.
Recent Conference and Seminar Papers
2006, Genetically Modified Organisms as Sociological Objects, presented to a conference entitled Getting Underneath the Fact , hosted by the Centre for Science Studies, Lancaster University, August 28-29.
2006, The Failure of Expertise as Governance? The GM Canola Debate in Australia, presented at the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) conference, Lausanne, August 23-26.
2005, Gene Technology and its Citizen Subjects: Regulating Gene Technology in Australia, presented to the annual conference of the Australasian Association for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science, Dunedin, New Zealand, December 3 – 7.
2005, The Recombinant DNA Debate and its Aftershocks: A Legacy of Boundary-work and Separations, presented in The HPS and Social Theory Seminar Series, Department of History and PHilosophy of Science, 17 May.
2003, (with Sylvia Metcalfe) Integrating Genetics as Practices of Primary Care, paper presented at the Departmental Seminar Series, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Melbourne, 7 October.
2001, Ordering of Uncertainty as 'Common Sense': The Logic of Risk in the Recombinant DNA Debate and Eli Lilly's Production of Human Insulin, paper presented at the Technologies of Uncertainty Conference, Cornell University, April 20-22.
2000, The Rhetoric of Realism: Constructing the Risk of Gene Technology in Germany, paper presented at HPS Departmental Seminar Series, 13 April.
1999, Manufacturing Human Insulin: Dispute Resolution as 'Ontological Politics', paper presented to the annual conference of the Australasian Association for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science (AAHPSSS), University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland Australia, 11-16 July.
1999, Overburdening Risk: Policy Frameworks and the Public Uptake of Gene Technology, paper presented at the Departmental Seminar Series, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Melbourne, April 13, and as a Centre for the Study of Environmental Change seminar, University of Lancaster, on June 2.
