Comments: João Arriscado Nunes (CES/FEUC)


About

In contemporary societies scientific knowledge presents itself as paradoxical. On the one hand, science, subsumed to capitalism and at the service of systems of oppression, feeds the machines of exploitation and makes peoples vulnerable. It is one of the heads of the capitalist hydra. On the other hand, and springing from the contradictions of the subsumption process, resistances and alternatives emerge which are broader than scientific activity itself and which are articulated in a more generalised way with the struggles for emancipation. This session will reflect on scientific dissidence, its organisation and the way in which it is articulated more generally with social struggles, particularly environmental and feminist ones.


Speaker's Bio note

Irina Castro Irina Castro works at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra. In 2009, Castro graduated in Applied Ecology at the University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro. In 2011 she got her MSc in Environmental Engineering, and the same year, she joined CES as a research fellow for the project "BIOSENSE | Science engaging society: Life Sciences Social Sciences and Publics", coordinated by João Arriscado Nunes. Since then, she has collaborated in developing, promoting, and evaluating science communication initiatives and promoting science-society relations, focusing on the relationship between society and biotechnology. In 2022 the completed her PhD in the programme Governance, Knowledge, and Innovation (sociology branch), in which she developed a thesis about the ontological construction of transgenic seeds through the practices of scientists and their scientific controversies. She works closely on this with João Arriscado Nunes (CES-FEUC), Rita Serra (CES), and Raúl García-Barrios, the latter researcher at the Multidisciplinary Research Centre of the Autonomous University of Mexico (CRIM / UNAM). Between 2014-2017, she worked as a project manager at the CES Project Management Office, returning to this role in 2020.