Next month (September 7) I'll be giving a talk at the British Science Festival entitled, "Follow the leader: the social lives of animals and humans". More details and bookings are available here. This public lecture will examine the parallels between the social behaviours of animals and humans, and how social behaviours can influence everything from pedestrians crossing the street to animal migrations across continents.
The British Science Festival is a massive public engagement event and I'm looking forward to being a part of it. From the festival website:
"The British Science Festival is the longest-established science Festival in Europe.
Organised by the British Science Association (BSA), it grew out of the tradition of the annual meetings of the Association. First held in York in 1831 – and annually at cities across the UK, and further afield, ever since – the annual meeting brought scientists together to discuss their ground-breaking work with one another, across scientific disciplines, and, crucially, with the general public.
It was at these annual meetings that that major scientific advances were announced: Joule’s experiments on the mechanical equivalent of heat in the 1840s; Bessemer’s steel process (1856); the discovery of the first of the inert gases, Argon, by Rayleigh and Ramsay (1894); the first public demonstration of wireless transmission over a few hundred yards by Sir Oliver Lodge (1894); and J.J. Thomson’s discovery of the electron (1899).
It was at these meetings that the term ‘scientist’ was coined, and the ‘dinosaur’ named."
No pressure!