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Louise Whiteley – Assistant Professor
My work at Medical Museion
I’m an Assistant Professor with Medical Museion and the Novo Nordisk Center for Basic Metabolic Research. My position involves both research and museum work, and my focus in the museum is on events surrounding our collections and exhibitions. I also teach on graduate courses in science communication and the responsible conduct of research.
My main research interest is in how biomedical research is entangled with popular culture; from newspaper headlines that over-extrapolate laboratory research, to the use of brain scan images in advertising or the uptake of scientific vocabularies into everyday speech. In particular, I’m interested in the role of popular cultures in negotiating the relationship between biomedical research and the subjective human experiences it invokes. At the moment I’m developing a project applying this interest to scientific studies of metabolism and disordered eating. Methodologically, I use qualitative interviews and textual analysis, and am currently investigating the use of phenomenological methods to explore the material cultures of laboratory research and media representation.
I’m also interested in the ethics of science communication as public engagement, particularly in models of engagement that move beyond explicit policy consultation. At the moment I’m working on a series of events exploring how the use of laboratory and museum objects might affect public engagement with biomedical science. Theoretically, I’m fascinated by the difficulties of investigating contemporary biomedicine in the present; in a social context that is also the context for the research and public communication that seeks to understand it.
My background
My academic history is interdisciplinary, but throughout I’ve been fascinated by the relationship between human experience and the brain and body, which I approached as a philosophical and empirical problem during my BA in Psychology and Philosophy at Oxford University and my PhD in Theoretical Neuroscience at University College London. I then became increasingly interested in these disciplines as sites where the relationship between body and mind is itself shaped, and in the use of science communication to open up these discussions in public domains. With writer James Wilkes and Prof. Geraint Rees I co-directed a Wellcome Trust project, Interior Traces, which used multimedia drama and debate to explore how different ways of looking at the brain have affected how we think about the mind.
In 2009 I completed a Masters in Science Communication at Imperial College London, and wrote my dissertation on the representation of fMRI brain scans in popular culture. This course also introduced me to museum studies and exhibition design – a new window on a lifelong passion. Before coming to Medical Museion, I worked at the National Core for Neuroethics at the University of British Columbia in Canada, where I contributed to a large qualitative interview study exploring the perspectives of mental healthcare practitioners, clients, and parents on the potential use of neuroimaging and genetics in psychiatry.
Other information
If you have an intriguing idea for a museum event or artistic collaboration, please do send me an email. |
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