Events

Past Event

Science and Storytelling: Visual Narratives Workshop

June 6, 2018
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
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Fayerweather Hall (Room 513), Columbia University, 1180 Amsterdam Avenue, New York

Whether you work in science or the humanities, using visual narratives can be a powerful tool in communicating your research to the broader public. When contemporary scholarship often prioritizes text over image, how do we make the most out of the visual medium?

Join science cartoonist Matteo Farinella and documentary filmmaker Lan Li in a three-week workshop exploring the intersection of visualization and storytelling. Learn about new techniques for describing your research through graphics and film. Applications are open to graduate students and scholars from all disciplines: neuroscience, history, physics, biology, linguistics, law, philosophy, and more. Anyone interested in sharing research in visual form is welcome. Space is limited. The application deadline is May 4, 2018; please submit your information on the workshop website.

Visual Storytelling Poster

Matteo Farinella has been reading comics for as long as he can remember. He soon began to create his own, which he continued throughout his Ph.D. studies in neuroscience at University College London. Only later did Matteo combine his passions by investigating how visual narratives can be used to increase scientific literacy. Comics aren’t just for children – the medium’s combination of art and writing provides a new visual methodology for explaining and displaying complex scientific ideas. Matteo has focused on theories of storytelling, using insights from cognitive neuroscience and psychology to understand how visual narratives can benefit science education and communication. Matteo remains an accomplished artist; his first book, Neurocomic, was published in 2013 and his 9-foot drawings of neurons are on display in Center for Science and Society’s offices.

Lan Li is a historian of the body and filmmaker. She received her PhD in Science Technology and Society Studies from the HASTS program at MIT. There, she explored a comparative history of body mapping among practitioners in China and Britain throughout the 20th century. Her work centers on how representations of peripheral sensation through hand-drawn maps cohered and conflicted with different understandings of health and disease. As a documentary filmmaker, Lan has also collaborated with integrative practitioners in India, Brazil, and China. She seeks to expand these collaborations across disciplinary and geographic spaces. Lan is an alumna of the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, and as a  Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience program, will take on a cultural history of numbness.

This event is sponsored by The Center for Science and Society.