PERITIA Lectures: 10 Speakers, 1400+ Participants, 200+ Questions
The PERITIA lectures series [Un]Truths: Trust in an Age of Disinformation came to an end this Tuesday with the final lecture ‘Expertise, Democracy and the Politics of Trust’ by Sheila Jasanoff (Harvard Kennedy School). Her lecture brought the series to a close with a reflection on the changing role of expertise across different political cultures.
Over 1400 attendees with more than 200 questions participated throughout the 10 lectures led by prominent academies from across Europe and the United States. The series explored the concepts of trust and truth in light of current events and included Q&A sessions moderated by Dr Shane Bergin and Prof Maria Baghramian (University College Dublin).
In the first part of the series, from April to June, participants were able to attend and interact with Naomi Oreskes (Harvard University), Quassim Cassam (Warwick University), Michael Lynch (University of Connecticut), Heather Douglas (Michigan State University) and Dan Sperber (Institut Jean Nicod).
The topics addressed ranged from trust in science, the value of truth in democracies or science advice systems, to conspiracy theories or cognitive science questions related to trust and argumentation.
The Autumn series, from October to November, brought together Maya J. Goldenberg (University of Guelph), Stephan Lewandowsky (University of Bristol), Philip Kitcher (Columbia University), Åsa Wikforss (Stockholm University) and Sheila Jasanoff (Harvard Kennedy School).
In this round of lectures, vaccine hesitancy, the lack of action against climate change, the impact of social media and disinformation on trust in science or the concept of knowledge resistance were discussed.
All biographies, abstracts, videos and reading materials are available online. The series was hosted by the University College Dublin and the American University of Armenia and counted with the support of ALLEA, the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities.
PERITIA is an EU-funded research project investigating public trust in expertise. ALLEA is one of the partners of the consortium, which is composed by 11 organisations from across Europe.
