York academics in the spotlight at BA Festival of Science
Posted on 1 September 2006
These are some of the challenging questions which University of York academics will seek to answer in presentations at the BA Festival of Science which starts tomorrow (Saturday 2 September) at the University of East Anglia.
Professor Chris Thomas, of the Department of Biology will argue that the recent responses of species to climate change are already likely to be the most rapid since the end of the last ice age. He will say that climate change triggered by human activity will drive potentially millions of species to extinction and suggest that humans have already permanently changed the Earth’s evolutionary history.
Professor Andrew Webster of the Department of Sociology, will be discussing the regulatory, governance and ethical issues raised by the increasing use of stem cells in regenerative medicine. Professor Webster is national programme director for the Economic and Social Research Council’s (ESRC) Stem Cells Initiative.
Deborah Quilgars, of the University’s Centre for Housing Policy, will focus on whether and how religious faith affects people’s approaches to money, risk and planning their financial futures. She will draw on interviews with Christians and Muslims, highlighting the complexity of people’s lives and how membership of social groups and belief systems can influence people’s decision making. The research is part of the ESRC's Social Contexts and Responses to Risk (SCARR) network.
In one of the Festival’s key sessions, this year’s President of the BA Education section, Professor Robin Millar, of the Department of Educational Studies and the Science Education Group at York, will also be asking how research can influence what happens in the classroom and the lecture theatre, and examining ways of improving the links between research and practice in science education.
The 2007 BA Festival of Science is due to take place in York
Notes to editors:
- More information on the 2006 BA Festival of Science at www.the-ba.net/the-ba/Events/FestivalofScience/
- The Science Education Group at the University of York consists of staff in the Centre for Innovation and Research in Science Education (CIRSE) in the Department of Educational Studies and in the Chemical Industry Education Centre (CIEC) in the Department of Chemistry. The Group has played a leading role in the development of several major science curriculum innovations including Salters Science, Salters Advanced Chemistry, Salters Horners Advanced Physics, Salters Nuffield Advanced Biology, AS Science for Public Understanding, and Twenty First Century Science.