Our university departments are becoming increasingly interdisciplinary where people from different backgrounds come together to keep each other in check while tackling large issues that have a lot at stake. One place this is happening is in synthetic biology, where computer scientists, engineers, biologists, ethicists, sociologists and artists “hold hands” in the lab as they develop new approaches to genetic engineering. Dr. Hilary Rose gets real on the promise of interdisciplinarity, and explains her concerns about what she thinks might be the dulling of criticality through such endeavours. Somehow, amazingly, she also manages to touch on feminism, the radical science movement, and Occupy!

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Dr. Hilary Rose is a prominent British feminist of sociology of science and social policy. Currently she is Visiting Research Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics, Professor Emeritus of Social Policy at the University of Bradford and Professor Emeritus of Physick, Gresham College, London. In 1997 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Uppsala for her contribution to the feminist sociology of science and in 2001 her book Love Power and Knowledge: Towards a feminist transformation of the sciences was listed one of the “101 Best Books of the 20th Century” (Mulheres Seculo XX 101 Livros) published by the Portuguese Ministry of Culture.