Risk and risk-taking in science and their relation to creativity and novelty in research outcomes have received increasing attention in recent years. However, there is a lack of clarity about what risk-taking in science is and how it is perceived. This paper inductively explores how scientists perceive risk and risk-taking in relation to funding proposals and subsequent research plans and what strategies they use to address uncertainty in practice. We construct a multidimensional framework of risk in science and base the (...) analysis on interview and survey data from grant recipients from the Villum Experiment Programme. Grantees perceive risk in a number of different ways, such as in terms of chances of success (publications, career, and funding), uncertainty due to use of new methods or equipment, or a new research area. While grantees expressed interest in taking on greater risk than they normally would and perceived risk-taking to be positively assessed by reviewers in the program, many interviewees still took steps to manage the risk of negative outcomes of their projects which may especially affect early-career researchers. In particular, two related strategies were employed to hedge project risk. The first was to ensure that project participation was balanced with participation in another research project with more certain outcomes. The second was to divide projects into two parts, where the first part had a certain outcome and the second part was experimental with uncertain outcomes. (shrink)

The article explores the complex roles shame plays in the lives of people with one or more chronic conditions. This is achieved through a participatory research process in which people with chronic conditions were invited to share stories of shame on the public social media profiles of a peer-led patient community called ‘Chronic Influencers’. The crowdsourced material shows that 7 out of 10 experience shame in relation to their illness on a daily or weekly basis. Other findings are that shame (...) seems to stick to ‘energetic failures’ of the slow or tired body in various social situations; shame is predominantly produced or anticipated in the intimate sphere; and shame can be ‘rescripted’ as culturally produced and politically contestable – and thus counter the pressure to individualise health as a project of personal improvement and self-inspection – when it is shared through voluntary storytelling among peers on social media. (shrink)

Moving from viruses, vaccines, and copycat murder to gay panics, xenophobia, and psychopaths, _Transforming Contagion_ energetically fuses critical humanities and social science perspectives into a boundary-smashing interdisciplinary collection on contagion. The contributors provocatively suggest contagion to be as full of possibilities for revolution and resistance as it is for the descent into madness, malice, and extensive state control. The infectious practices rooted in politics, film, psychological exchanges, social movements, the classroom, and the circulation of a literary text or meme on (...) social media compellingly reveal patterns that emerge in those attempts to re-route, quarantine, define, or even exacerbate various contagions. (shrink)