Professor Adam Burgess
Professor Burgess’ work is currently focused on historical risk perspective and his major current project is on the modern British historical experience, with Professor Gabe Mythen. The book will review defining experiences such as AIDS, BSE, child abduction and terrorist anxieties in the ‘making of British risk society’.
Professor Burgess has recently been an expert advisor to the innovation foundation, National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) on a collaborative project with the Lloyd’s Register Foundation on global safety challenges. The project is engaging actors across all sectors to establish the top priority challenges to safety and commission smart solutions to them.
Activities can also be found on Kent Academia.
Professor Alex Stevens
Professor Stevens is currently working with the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, co-chairing a working group on reducing opioid-related deaths.
Dr Joy Zhang
Dr Joy Zhang has been researching in China during the first half of 2016, researching attitudes to genetically modified organisms in the context of concerns over food safety. She has been conducting a series of focus groups discussions on the public perception of GM tech and food risks in Beijing, Wuhan and Xi’an.
Dr Zhang has been invited to join the selection committee for a Chair in memory to Ulrich Beck for Collège d’études mondiales of the Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme. The Collège is a transdisciplinary research institute which hosts 20 world leading social scientists. This initiative was founded by Michel Wieviorka and backed by four Nobel Prize Winners. Ulrich Beck held the Chair of Cosmopolitan Risk Communities at the Collège from 2011 until his death. This intellectual project based in Paris allowed Beck and a network of scholars to create new analytical tools for methodological cosmopolitanism. By creating a Chair in memory of Ulrich Beck, Collège d’études mondiales aims to continue Beck’s intellectual project. It is to appoint one renowned specialist in the social sciences who has developed her/his research according to Beck’s approaches.