What is Public Engagement with Science?

Public Engagement with Science: Definingthe Project, coauthored by Melissa Jacquart and me, was published with Cambridge University Press in January 2025. This volume represents the culmination of years of Melissa’s and my efforts to explore the contours of what it is for academics to do public-facing work about science.

Engaging the public in science: what does this look like?

Way back in 2017, I received initial approval from my institution, the University of Cincinnati (UC), to develop a Center for Public Engagement with Science. Melissa Jacquart, also a philosopher, soon joined me at UC to co-develop the center. Initially, a lot of the work was identifying patterns in how academic science—broadly construed to include natural and social sciences, as well as other STEM disciplines—interfaces with public life. 

And, while we were interested in engagement opportunities created by the internet, our main focus from the start was how academic science interfaces with the local communities its embedded in. We quickly realized that we want to conduct and support public engagement that is (1) participant-centered, (2) interdisciplinary, and (3) community partnered. So that is the basic recipe for the UC Center for Public Engagement with Science, or PEWS.

One of Melissa’s and my early activities was to host a 2021 workshop convening academics interested in public engagement with public engagement practitioners (supported by NSF Award SES-1946951). Videos of this workshop are available on the PEWS YouTube channel. This newly published Element is our first of two planned publications summarizing our learning from that workshop—and, really, our learning from our years spent laying the groundwork for PEWS.

I like thinking of our Element as a tour of resources for and important considerations bearing on attempts to engage with the public about scientific research. Many academics, including Melissa and me, find themselves wanting to use their academic skills to engage not just with other academics but with public audiences as well. This can be motivated by the desire to share scientific content, to encourage more connections with science, or even to shift scientific research priorities toward topics of public concern. We wanted to create a volume accessible to readers from a wide variety of backgrounds who want a window into getting started with public engagement with science.

In this Element, we consider how public engagement with science is defined and what aims it might have (section 1) and explore the wide range of academic disciplines with resources to offer public engagement with science (section 2). We then consider the aims and techniques of collaborating across disciplines and with practitioners on public engagement initiatives, and we consider university structures that can support public engagement (section 3). We outline a goal-directed approach for developing public engagement with science initiatives (section 4). Finally, we consider the variety of forms public engagement can take and how public engagement can feature in research and teaching efforts (section 5).

Cambridge University Press developed the Elements format of publication to be midway between an academic journal article and a full-length book. Elements come in thematic series, all sharing the same cover illustration, and all curated by a series editor (or coeditors). Our Element is actually the first in a new series, also edited by Melissa and me, Elements in Public Engagement with Science. Together with an interdisciplinary and international Editorial Board, we are commissioning Elements on topics like STEM learning ecosystems, citizen science, children’s engagement in science, indigenous science, and more.  You can learn more about the series at its website.

Public Engagement with Science: Defining the Project is available open access, here: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009475105

Angela Potochnik is Professor of Philosophy, Head of the Philosophy Department, and Director of the Center for Public Engagement with Science at the University of Cincinnati.​  She is the author of Idealization and the Aims of Science (2017) and Science and the Public (2024), as well as coauthor of Recipes for Science: An Introduction to Scientific Methods and Reasoning (2018, 2nd Ed. 2024) and Public Engagement with Science: Defining the Project (2025). She earned her PhD from Stanford University in 2007.