Brigitte Nerlich

My kind of place

Emeritus Professor of Science, Language, and Society

brigitte.nerlich@nottingham.ac.uk

twitter: @BNerlich

blog

(this hasn't been updated for a while)

I am Emeritus Professor of Science, Language, and Society at the Institute for Science and Society (School of Sociology and Social Policy). I studied French and philosophy in Germany and gained a DrPhil in French linguistics. After a postdoc in general linguistic at Oxford I moved to Nottingham. My current research focuses on the cultural and political contexts in which metaphors and other framing devices are used in the public, policy and scientific debates about synthetic biology and climate change. I have written books and articles on the history of linguistics, semantic change, metaphor, metonymy, polysemy and, more recently, the sociology of health and illness and the social study of science and technology. In 2011 the University of Nottingham awarded me a DLitt for my research and publications relating to the social study of metaphor.

Albert Camus: "Mal nommer un objet, c’est ajouter au malheur de ce monde."


Blog: http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/makingsciencepublic/

Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6617-7827

Academia.edu webpage: http://nottingham.academia.edu/BrigitteNerlich

Google scholar profile: http://tinyurl.com/ku8kl8p

Twitter: @BNerlich


Recent research projects:

3D Printing with atoms, funded by the EPSRC, PI Philip Moriarty, 2016-2019

Making Science Public, funded by a Leverhulme Trust programme grant, 2012-2017 (honorary associate)

Synthetic Biology Research Centre funded by the BBSRC and the EPSRC, 2014-2018 (Social Science lead, Responsible Research and Innovation (honorary associate) There is a separate website for images and visualisations in science and society.


BOOKS

Communicating Biological Sciences: Ethical and Metaphorical Dimensions

Google books entry

Edited by Brigitte Nerlich, Richard Elliott, and Brendon Larson, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009

The Social and Cultural Impact of Foot and Mouth Disease in the UK in 2001: Experiences and Analyses

Edited by Martin Döring and Brigitte Nerlich, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009

More books can be found here.


PROJECTS and project related publications

Programme of Research: Making Science Public, funded by the Leverhulme Trust (2012-2017)


From Greenhouse effect to climategate, funded by the ESRC (2011-2014)

Articles related to this project - see here

UK media representations of carbon capture and storage

Fracking in the UK press

Fracking on YouTube

Images of extreme weather: Symbolising human responses to climate change

Contesting science by appealing to its norms: Readers discuss climate science in The Daily Mail.

Climate change and 'climategate' in online reader comments: A mixed methods study.

Climate in the News: How Differences in Media Discourse Between the US and UK Reflect National Priorities

Metaphors_we_die_by?_Geoengineering_metaphors_and_the_argument_from_catastrophe

When climate science became climate politics: British media representations of climate change in 1988 (online first)

'Carbon compounds' - 'carbon language' - project website

Articles related to this project

'Low carbon' metals, markets and metaphors: The creation of expectations about climate change mitigation

Climategate': Paradoxical Metaphors and Political Paralysis

'Low carbon diet': Reducing the complexities of climate change to human scale

Carbon gold rush and carbon cowboys: A new chapter in green mythology?

Compounds, creativity and complexity in climate change communication

Carbon reduction activism

Theory and language of climate change communication

From Carbon Markets to Carbon Morality: Creative Compounds as Framing Devices

SUMMARY

Nanotechnology - Articles related to this topic

Biomilitarism and nanomedicine: Evil metaphors for the good of human health?

Imag(in)ing the Nano-scale: Interactions between Science and Art

Updated Bibliography

The visual construction of nanoscience, entry in Encyclopedia of Nanoscience and Society

From Nautilus to Nanobo(a)ts…

Journal of Nano Education

Nanoscale Science and Engineering Education (Book)

Young adults and nanomedicine

Powered by imagination: Nanbots at the Science Photo Library

You can find more info about visualisation in science here

Genetics, genomics, stem cells, synthetic biology - Articles related to this topic

Synthetic biology: Building the language for a new science brick by old metaphorical brick

Understanding genetic discrimination; seminar convened by the Human Genetics Commission and the AHRC, January, 2010-02-16

Designer babies

Anatomy of a media event…

Genomics: shifts in metaphorical landscape between 2000 and 2003

Genomics discourses

The book of life: how the human genome project was revealed to the public

Beyond the human genome...

The microbiome and its metaphors

Cloning and popular cultural imagery

Cloning, fiction, fantasy, fears

Clones and crops

Meaning of Genetics

Stem cell debate in Germany

Infectious diseases, hygiene and biosecurity - Articles related to this topic

Crying wolf? Biosecurity and metacommunication in the context of the 2009 swine flu pandemic

Metaphors and biorisks…

Conceptualising biosecurity – the case of swine flu

Avian Flu: The creation of expectations in the interplay between science and the media.

Modern matrons and infection control practices: aspirations and realities

The habitus of hygiene (MRSA)

Hygiene and biosecurity: The language and politics of risk (MRSA and avian flu)

MRSA and the post-antibiotic apocalypse?

The 'ins and outs' of biosecurity (avian infuenza)

Health, hygiene and biosecurity: Conflicting knowledge claims in the UK poultry industry

SARS and metaphors

Conceptualising foot and mouth disease…

War on foot and mouth disease

The social and cultural impact of the 2001 outbreak

Hand hygiene - the GloYo - a children's educational toy

more info here

COVID

Social representations of social distancing

Social representations, identity threat and coping amid Covid19

Fearful intimacies

Lots of blog posts


Food and Environment - Articles related to this topic

Silent spring…

Politics of food…

Discourse analysis of probiotic web advertising

Balancing Food Risks and Food Benefits: the Coverage of Probiotics in the UK National Press

Nutritional Altruism

pdf


Past publications on metaphor, metonymy, polysemy, and so on

Discourse metaphors

Ambiguities we live by

Mind, meaning and metaphor