Bruce Lewenstein

(MENAFN- The Conversation)

• Professor of Science Communication, Cornell University

Profile Articles

Bruce V. Lewenstein (general studies in the humanities, A.B., 1980, University of Chicago; history and sociology of science, M.A., 1985, and Ph.D., 1987, University of Pennsylvania) is Professor of Science Communication, based in the Department of Communication at Cornell University. He is also a full member of the Department of Science & Technology Studies, where he served as chair, 2014-2021. In 2022, he began serving as Cornell's University Ombuds. He works across the field of public communication of science and technology, including informal science education, citizen science, and communication training for scientists. He is active in international activities that contribute to education and research on public communication of science and technology, especially in the developing world. As a historian, he tries to document the ways that public communication is fundamental to the process of producing reliable knowledge about the natural world.

From 1998 to 2003, Lewenstein was editor of the journal Public Understanding of Science. He was co-chair of a U.S. National Research Council study, Learning Science in Informal Environments: People, Places, and Pursuits, edited by Philip Bell, Bruce Lewenstein, Andrew W. Shouse, and Michael A. Feder (2009). In 2012, he was the first Presidential Fellow at the Chemical Heritage Foundation (Philadelphia, now named the Science History Institute), where he worked on issues of public engagement. He has been a Fulbright Scholar in Israel (2011) and Portugal (2022). He was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2002, in 2011 served as chair of the AAAS's section on societal implications of science and engineering, and in 2017 served as chair of the AAAS's section on general interest in science and engineering.

He is co-author of Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, Michael M. Sokal, and Bruce V. Lewenstein, The Establishment of American Science: 150 Years of the AAAS (Rutgers Univ. Press, 1999), editor of When Science Meets the Public (Washington, DC: AAAS, 1992), and co-editor of David Chittenden, Graham Farmelo, and Bruce V. Lewenstein, eds., Creating Connections: Museums and the Public Understanding of Research (Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2004). He has edited or co-edited special journal sections on citizen science, feminist approaches to science communication, and science communication training. He has been an active evaluator of informal science education projects, especially in citizen science and served on the U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering, & Medicine committee that produced Learning Through Citizen Science: Enhancing Opportunities by Design (2019). He is the author or co-author of more than 50 peer-reviewed articles and chapters, more than 50 other major articles, and more than 75 shorter articles and book reviews.

Lewenstein served on the board of directors of Embarcadero Media (based in his hometown of Palo Alto, Calif.), which produces community newspapers and related digital media, from 2015 to 2023. He spent four years as a faculty-elected member of the Board of Trustees of Cornell University (2016-2020).

Experience

• –present Professor of Science Communication, Cornell University

Education

• 1987 University of Pennsylvania, PhD, History & Sociology of Science and Science & Technology Policy

Honours

Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science

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