SCIO is pleased to announce that alumna Erinn Campbell has recently been accepted into an MPhil in the History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine at Darwin College, Cambridge.
Erinn is from San Clemente, California and graduated summa cum laude from Seattle Pacific University in 2020. She completed a Bachelor of Science in ecology and a Bachelor of Arts in comparative history of ideas, fields she will combine in her upcoming postgraduate study.
Erinn joined SCIO’s programme in Michaelmas term 2018; it was an experience which grew her as a writer and researcher and cemented her desire to pursue historical research for her career. She credits her SCIO tutors with encouraging her to pursue increasingly ambitious projects and introducing her to the subject on which she would write her undergraduate thesis. Her time at SCIO was deeply formative for her as a scholar.
At Cambridge, Erinn will specialise in the history of science communication, focusing on the relationship between scientific knowledge and public perceptions of authority in Victorian Britain. Experts and laypeople alike use scientific language to add weight to their claims, and Erinn will study how Victorians used scientific speech both to support and challenge the status quo.
Erinn sees her Master’s degree as a stepping stone to a career in academic research, and her research interests have a perennial public relevance. She comments that public perceptions of science have never been more salient, as communities debate how to balance scientists’ advice on managing coronavirus with protecting economies and personal freedoms. The direction of societies and whole countries can be altered by how they accept or contest the authority of the scientist.
