Charlotte Sleigh

Charlotte Sleigh is Reader in History of Science at the University of Kent and Director of the Centre for the History of the Sciences. She is co-director of the MSc programme Science, Communication and Society.

Most commented posts

  1. Decolonizing the teaching of HSTM — 2 comments
  2. Whewell and the coining of ‘scientist’ in the Quarterly Review — 2 comments
  3. How I came to study Science Communication and do research on Extinction Rebellion — 2 comments
  4. Science criticism, or, what is this thing about science called? — 2 comments
  5. Food science: then and now — 1 comment

Author's posts

Sep 18

P R I M E R – a foretaste of Chain Reaction!

The Centre for the History of the Sciences and the School of Biosciences are getting very excited about their forthcoming exhibition Chain Reaction! at the Sidney Cooper Gallery (22 November – 21 December). Here’s a taster of work by Katy Price that will be on show … P R I M E R Cork boards, …

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Sep 06

If you go down in the woods today: TED and venture capital

TED is a genius brand.  It’s creative, radical, iconoclastic, open to all.  Plus, it sounds like a furry bear, and who – except those who routinely steal candy from children – could dislike one of those? TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and it was begun as a conference at which developers in those fields …

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Mar 06

Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, Newton?

Ernest Rutherford was having none of it: he was very anxious that everyone knew his results were down to him and nothing else.  On hearing ‘Lucky fellow, Rutherford, always on the crest of a wave,’ he is said to have replied, wittily, ‘Well, I made the wave, didn’t I?’[1] But Rutherford aside, many of our …

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Nov 01

Graduate profile: Lucie Houghton

Lucie Houghton

Course studied: MSc Science, Communication and Society Year of graduation: 2011 Any previous roles before the one you currently have? After graduating from my BSc (Kent) I got a job on a graduate programme as a sales executive for an orthopaedic company. However, there was a lot more to the role than just sales. I had …

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Aug 29

Torches of Freedom, or the self-perpetuating promotional power of science

Wake up people! Politicians and corporations are manipulating us. And they’re using all the sophistication of science to do it. Thus is the general tenor of a recent wave of internet news articles and blog entries, illustrating the hidden machinations of the shadowy figures who ‘really’ control our lives. And though the claims made in …

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Aug 05

Fellow experimenters in art and science part II

Sarah Craske, one of our Chain Reactionists, put me onto this one: BioARTCAMP.  There’s also a video of the project.  BioARTCAMP was a project run out in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains, bringing together artists and scientists into an unfamiliar and necessarily improvisatory environment.  This simple act of transportation has a transformative effect on …

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Jul 30

Fellow experimenters in art and science part I

brain images

Fellow experimenters in art and science part I Since Chain Reaction! got underway, several people have sent links to other projects around the world. Do You Mind? is a New Zealand collaboration based on neuroscience (thanks, Janet Young!).  Its rationale is pretty much the opposite to ours; rather than demystifying science for artists, it’s trying …

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Jul 25

On opening some black boxes

What is the history of science?  A clichéd answer might invoke a parade of big names: Galileo, Darwin, Einstein.  But this is a really rubbish history if we are trying to get people to understand and engage with science in the present day.  Will solar power save us from global warming?  Do neutrinos move faster …

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