New consultancy – Strengthening the Europe-Africa Digital Ecosystem Through Increased R&I Cooperation

Dingwall Enterprises have been appointed to provide independent ethics advice to the EU HORIZON Coordination and Support Action SEADE (Strengthening the Europe-Africa Digital Ecosystem Through Increased R&I Cooperation) The SEADE project provides fundamental and tangible support services to the Research and Innovation (R&I) ecosystems of Europe (EU) and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), undertaking human-centred research, programme… Read More »

There’s something in the air…but is it a virus? Part 1

The Covid-19 pandemic has, almost inevitably, exposed important differences in writing about the history of disease. Is this a narrative driven by a desire to win an argument in the present or is it intended to reconstruct the thinking of the past in its own terms?… This clash is particularly evident in the disputes about… Read More »

How Intelligent is Artificial Intelligence?

Today’s moral panic is about AI and machine learning. Governments around the world are hastening to adopt positions and regulate what they are told is a potentially existential threat to humanity – and certainly to a lot of middle class voters in service occupations. However, it is notable that most of the hype is coming… Read More »

Oppenheimer: Science, Culture and Politics

Christopher Nolan’s film about J Robert Oppenheimer makes for a long evening and requires serious concentration. Cillian Murphy’s performance in the central role is an extraordinary representation of a man tormented by many demons even before his role in the atomic bomb programme… Such a richly textured film also has footnotes that are worth a… Read More »

Edgar Morin’s Leçons d’un siècle de vie

Edgar Morin is probably the most influential French sociologist that the English-speaking world has never acknowledged… In part, this is likely to be because he does not fit the image of French sociology that has dominated the English-speaking academic world. Morin has always taken his own line on major issues of the day rather than… Read More »

Can we trust the World Health Organization with so much power?

“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely…”, observed the English historian, Lord Acton, writing to a friend in 1857. This widely-quoted aphorism should lead us to reflect on the absolute powers that the World Health Organization is currently seeking for its Director-General (DG). The organization has abandoned the broad, interdisciplinary, vision of health… Read More »