#38 When good intention isnt enough: Jacqui Hoepner on morally repulsive research & academic freedom

“I went into this thinking that objectivity and neutrality were the Name of the Game. That you couldn’t do good research if you were in any way biased or if you had your own opinions or experiences or values that might influence the research.”

In episode number 4 of our STS Series, Dr Jacqui Hoepner, an early career research fellow at the Australian National University. They begin by discussing Jacqui’s PhD experience, where she originally set out to navigate the tricky landscape of wind turbines and public health, with good intentions to be a neutral researcher in a very politicised realm, but after receiving some serious push-backs she chose instead to turn her attention to silencing in academia. Then they unpack further what it means to have academic freedom and question where you draw the line around what research should and should not be done. They end by talking about reflexivity and what value anthropology has in studies of science.

LINKS AND CITATIONS

If you’d like to read the blogpost that Jacqui wrote for TFS last year, you can find it here: https://thefamiliarstrange.com/2018/05/24/academic-freedom/

And you can listen to Jacqui’s podcast ‘You Need to Shut Up’ here https://www.youneedtoshutup.com/ or here https://podcasts.apple.com/za/podcast/you-need-to-shut-up/id1367884727

If you’d also like to be inspired by the incredible work of Simone Dennis, you can read more about her here: https://researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers/dennis-sj

Mary Douglas (1966) Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Purity_and_Danger.html?id=QGRUTH8hnQ4C

QUOTES (for full list see our website)

“I was quite naïve thinking that all I had to do was have good intentions and that was enough to… do research in this highly politicised area.”

This anthropology podcast is supported by the Australian Anthropological Society, the ANU’s College of Asia and the Pacific and College of Arts and Social Sciences, and the Australian Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, and is produced in collaboration with the American Anthropological Association.

Music by Pete Dabro: dabro1.bandcamp.com

Shownotes by Deanna Catto