Helene Scott
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hscottfordsmand.bsky.social
Helene Scott
@hscottfordsmand.bsky.social
2.2K followers 480 following 140 posts
Philosophy-medicine-bodies | working on messy categories in clinical enquiry @STSucl | previously @camHPS & @ClareHall | PhD from Medical Museion (@UCPH)
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hscottfordsmand.bsky.social
@anatoliikozlov.bsky.social taught me this: no better way to disrupt academic stiffness than bringing 🎈into the conversation.
Pre-action shots from the beautiful @britishacademy.bsky.social before we forgot about our phones in all the excitement of moving and talking
#researchculture #sts #ECR
Man in front of slides, balloons on a table by the side. Very fancy room with two human sized portraits and polished wooden floors Woman in front of slide, holding a balloon into the air. Slide reads: solidarity, space, experience, embodiment, languages, plurality of identities.
September 18, 2025 at 6:18 PM
hscottfordsmand.bsky.social
Today we’re taking the #CultureLab to @britishacademy.bsky.social - to set a tone of connection and joyful energy at the BA ECRN National Postdoctoral Conference ✨ celebrating the wonderful promise of early career, and creating support networks for the difficult bits.
@anatoliikozlov.bsky.social
Lecture hall, slide showing BA ECRN National Post Doctoral Conference 2025
September 18, 2025 at 9:32 AM
hscottfordsmand.bsky.social
Finally, Richard Long’s Rock installations (~1980s). On making traces in the real world as an art (and philosophical?) form - and how we display this after the fact? On making the ordinary noticeable by organisation and classification. And on stones as nature, ressource and symbol.
September 16, 2025 at 1:45 PM
hscottfordsmand.bsky.social
Second: Cildo Meireles’ Babel (2001). On how we tell the history of technology, on noise and ways of attending to sound, on the transition from a technology of resistance to one of state communication, and on the return of chaos as the return of the need for households to have transiter radios.
September 16, 2025 at 12:26 PM
hscottfordsmand.bsky.social
First work: Rothko’s black on maroon (1958). On how the quiet and unsettling can call us to connect. On the uncomfortable of emergent objects and on restaurant, museums and universities as ambiguous places between consumption and contemplation #sts
September 16, 2025 at 11:23 AM
hscottfordsmand.bsky.social
Start-of-year awayday with @stsucl.bsky.social - we’ll kick off at Tate Modern, discussing the relations between sts and art, before we head into workshopping AI issues and large scale teaching formats ☀️
September 16, 2025 at 8:35 AM
hscottfordsmand.bsky.social
Today, working from Whipple Library in Cambridge to do research on Mary Hesse.
Here is her first book (1954) addressing the compatibility of science and religion, with early thoughts on operationalism and models - pushing against established positivist accounts of science.
#philsci #hps
Book title pages, Science and the human imagination - Aspects of the history and logic of physical science. Mary B. Hesse, lecturer in mathematics in the university of Leeds. SCM Press LTD
September 4, 2025 at 1:17 PM
hscottfordsmand.bsky.social
Returning to online life to share a photo from my new office - 1st day at @stsucl.bsky.social ❤️‍🔥
Can’t wait to get into teaching and research and wonderful conversations in this place!
View out of window. Messy back courtyard. In reflection silhouette of women wearing white shirt and holding a phone to take the photo.
September 1, 2025 at 11:47 AM
hscottfordsmand.bsky.social
Celebrating traces of the CultureLab at @pdncambridge.bsky.social with a mini exhibition of images from the Living Science performance 🥂🧬🥼🔬✨ #sciart @anatoliikozlov.bsky.social
Man adjusting framed photo on yellow brick wall. Several photos with people writing and performing. Sign with text: Living science, workshops and event, March 2025 For the Cambridge festival, a group of PDN postdocs produced a live performance reflecting on life in the sciences and the role of trust and time - or lack thereof - in their day-ro-day. The performance came together by working as a group through a series of creative exercises facilitated by the CultureLab. Prosecco bottle, cup, rainbow keychain with PDN logo.
May 23, 2025 at 5:56 PM
hscottfordsmand.bsky.social
Went north to discuss *qualitative methods* in philosophy with @sarahwieten.bsky.social , @borka86.bsky.social and a handful of other exciting speakers and participants.

The light here is amazing ✨
#philsci #hps #philsky

www.durham.ac.uk/research/ins...
River in front of castle/cathedral (Durham). Soft light.
March 27, 2025 at 6:40 AM
hscottfordsmand.bsky.social
Prepped and ready to go, armed with overhead projectors and courageous scientists 🧡😎
#philsci #sts
@cambridgefestival.bsky.social @pdncambridge.bsky.social
@anatoliikozlov.bsky.social
Indoor space, walls covered in posters with colourful text. Man, standing behind an overhead projector pointing light towards something beyond the image. Big smile. Empty chairs lined up ready for an audience.
March 22, 2025 at 9:01 AM
hscottfordsmand.bsky.social
And Sunday, I ran the Cambridge half marathon in bright sun and 17 degrees, with amazing support from my housemates 🧡🙌☀️
Home made card with watercolour flower painting and running shoes, reading “you ran so fast”. In the background: snacks.
March 10, 2025 at 5:11 PM
hscottfordsmand.bsky.social
Saturday @anatoliikozlov.bsky.social and I had a #CultureLab workshop with scientists, to prepare the @cambridgefestival.bsky.social performance: *Living Science*.
We discussed trust and time - in science and in life - whistled, got comfortable with oddity, made up silly stories, and laughed a lot.
Table with papers and coloured pens. Women on pink T-shirt looking around. Visible people standing around the table (but image is cut so their faces aren’t visible)
March 10, 2025 at 5:11 PM
hscottfordsmand.bsky.social
It’s Monday and the clouds are back, but I’m still floating from this weekend!☀️
Friday @milenaivanova.bsky.social took me to @newnhamcollege.bsky.social international Women’s day celebration 💪 with three wise women speaking on forms of resistance and the importance of equality and mutual respect.
Panel of three women in front of a slide showing “international women’s day”. In front, and the backs of an audience of mostly young women, some dressed in Cambridge gowns.
March 10, 2025 at 5:11 PM
hscottfordsmand.bsky.social
Also, you may think that sending funny memes to your friends is an internet thing… but here is a cutout sent to Hesse from a friend, when they learnt she was getting an honorary degree at @cambridgeuni.bsky.social (accompanied by a more serious note of congratulations).
Cartoon image, showing four people around a table. Three are sitting with papers in front of them, one is standing, mid-punch on the jaw of the person next to her. At the bottom a text says “an excellent defence. Let’s give her the doctorate”.
February 27, 2025 at 2:18 PM
hscottfordsmand.bsky.social
Going through the @whipplemuseum.bsky.social collection of Mary Hesse papers, I found this small clip out with an update from 1962.

The ambiguous tone of it has me wondering whether it was written in contempt or celebration, by whom and for what. #hps
From the news, 1962 Two women are virtually controlling the publication used by senior University members to express themselves on policies and topics for the first time in history. The Cambridge review is entirely edited by Dr Mary Hesse and Mrs Karen Needham. The review has no official status but is mostly read and contributed to by senior academics. It recently had its 2,000th edition. Added it handwriting: March 2012
February 26, 2025 at 2:10 PM
hscottfordsmand.bsky.social
Monday = pragmatism day ☀️(even when it rains).
This term, we’ve been reading about fruitfulness and heuristic appraisal. Today we tried to sort out the tangle of terms we’ve encountered so far…

Brought to us by Damon Kuzin and @niallroe.bsky.social
#philsci #pragmatismmondays
Whiteboard with words: pursuit-worthiness, promise = puzzle solving ?, fertility = new Q [questions], Uberty [weird Peirce word, don’t ask, we’re not sure] = leaping ?, fruitfulness - Peirce / contemporary?, discovery. p-fertility / u-fertility. Heuristic appraisal vs epistemic appraisal. Arrow from epistemic to p-fertility [maybe, who knows]. Backward, forward - pair of eyes [in which direction are we looking ?! Seems important but also confusing]. Justification. Methodology. Economy of research.
February 24, 2025 at 4:04 PM
hscottfordsmand.bsky.social
A student sent an essay plan for tomorrow’s supervision, warning me that it was still very provisional… They probably attached the wrong file but I love the version where this is the real document. Something serene about the honesty of the - indeed very provisional - attempt at an essay plan.
Word document. On page in small writing it says “plan” followed by colon. Then just empty white space.
February 19, 2025 at 9:26 PM
hscottfordsmand.bsky.social
“You are who you cite” - Today at #CultureLab we explored citation and reference through collage; leading to conversations on the commodification of science, on how references frame or direct interpretations, on cultural symbols, and on the many uncitable influences✨

@anatoliikozlov.bsky.social
Closeup, hands cutting out an imagine of a female doctor Lego figure. Birds Eye photo of table with pens, a glue stick, and cutouts of different medical and cultural visuals. Female doctor Lego figure cutout amongst them. Table with pens, glue stick, coffee, and a yellow Lego figure astronaut. Person cutting into magazine with an image of a moon.
February 19, 2025 at 4:25 PM
hscottfordsmand.bsky.social
Yogi tea making an effort to get in on the market of tea-drinking philosophers…
Yogi tea note saying: intelligence and intuition are two friends
February 11, 2025 at 12:29 PM
hscottfordsmand.bsky.social
I’m teaching a course on making medical knowledge. Today we discussed coordination and social epistemology - Longino, Solomon and Keuck✨
The students did a series of consensus group discussions to ‘settle’ whether and when disagreement is good in medicine, tracing the process on postits. #philsci
Door with pink and lilac post it’s on window screens
February 10, 2025 at 4:57 PM
hscottfordsmand.bsky.social
Today at CultureLab we discussed writing formats and wrote #sciku (pamphlet to come 👀) @anatoliikozlov.bsky.social

I’m not a scientist, but I work with #philosophy of language and #STS. Here is a Haiku-burn for a very select audience:

You are empty words
No verification test
No logic of care
People scattered around a room, writing.
January 31, 2025 at 6:47 PM
hscottfordsmand.bsky.social
I promised you guys more of these. Here is one that I find particularly great.

Materials: plastic, metal, wiring, and human tears. (See ALT text for full transcript of the sign).
Photo showing the corner of a printer, and an art-like label on the wall. Label reads: Konica Minolta (b. 2003). Title: Temperamental printer, 2019 Materials: plastic, metal, wiring, and human tears. This stunning piece emulates a fully functioning printer. It is an interactive sculpture, which allows the viewers to engage in a deeper level, as the various episodes of operational failure that the viewer may experience confront them with their own frustrations. The piece calls us to engage with the mundane volatility that excuses within each of us.
January 21, 2025 at 2:16 PM
hscottfordsmand.bsky.social
And we’re back on: 1st term day included a tour of the Whipple Museum✨ organised by the #STS Cambridge Network (SCaN)
We got an intricate story on networks of knowledge underlying the discovery of 🧬, learnt about the Cavendish lab, saw the Globe Room, AND an exciting new acquisition (see ALT) #hps
Pinboard exhibition display from the exhibition on The Cavendish Lab - done as a way to exhibit the kind of collaboration and culture that existed around the lab, and made its journey from newly founded, scorned upon, “practical” space, towards a world-renowned site of scientific excellence possible. A cyclotron from the cavendish - and early form of particle accelerator, used to accelerate electrons and similarly sized particles. Terrestrial globe from 1690 New acquisition: a Spanish portable sundial, which has been moderated by someone to work in the southern hemisphere, and inscribed with useful coordinates traced along the west coast of South America, targeting, in particular, sites of relevant to Spanish extractivist imperialism, i.e. ports used for exporting raw materials and other goods.
January 21, 2025 at 2:08 PM
hscottfordsmand.bsky.social
A PhD student at CambridgeHPS has been putting “artwork signs” up all around our department next to “ordinary things” and they are brilliant. They unfailingly make me stop and smile and notice the wonderful strangeness of the world ✨

Best workplace spirit-lift hack I’ve seen in a long time 🙌
Pot with branch from dead plant in a windows sill. Next to it is another plant and a watering pot. Bellow, a sign is stuck on the wall reading - Artist: unknown. Dead plant, 2024. Glass, plastic, wood and misc. organic material. The precise placement of this piece among a collection of living plants allows the unknowns artist to remind the viewer of the inescapable cycle of life and death, as well as the capricious nature of the Ava rage house plant.
December 19, 2024 at 6:08 PM