Louise Whiteley

• Presentation
• Research outputs
• Prizes
• Keywords

I’m an Associate Professor in Medical Science Communication at Medical Museion and CBMR. My position involves research, teaching, and museum work, emphasizing the dialogue between the three.

My core research interests include how biomedical research that implicates the mind affects peoples' understandings of themselves, in part through popular culture. A second core research interest is how museum exhibitions, artworks, and performance can illuminate the relationship between science and the subjective experiences it invokes, acting as a form of public research that allows different disciplinary practices to 'make something together'. In both these areas, I have a methodological focus on the role of communication in working across different knowledge practices; including an interest in images, metaphors, and the generative possibilities that lie in the failures of translation and representation. I also take this attention to communication - and the importance of sharing ethos and purpose as well as knowledge - into my teaching and supervision.

My current projects include developing the Sensing Holobiont performance installation with artist duo Baum & Leahy, Josh Evans, Kim Wejendorp and others; studying practices to improve scientific research culture with PhD fellow Annika Klæmintsdóttir Olsen; and developing a project with Dr Tine Friis and the reNEW research center to understand how patient's imaginations of the futures of stem cell treatments shape their present ways of living with their bodies. 

My earlier work includes leading a research group project called Microbes on the Mind from 2019-2023, funded by the Velux Foundation, and was part of the team producing the exhibition and public engagement project The World is in You from 2020-2022. I was also part of the curatorial team for The Living Room project led by Martin Grünfeld, My previous exhibition project with Adam Bencard, Mind the Gut, was supported by the Bikuben Vision prize 2015 and won the UMAC award 2019. Mind the Gut involved a 'co-curation' process that invited artists and scientists to join the curatorial team, which we have written about as a strategy for exhibiting complex, contemporary research, and for exploring boundaries between science, art, and cultural history exhibitions.

Selected publications

1. Accepted/In press

   Making voices: Curating encounters with personal experiences in an exhibition space

   Friis, Tine & Whiteley, Louise, 2023, (Accepted/In press) Ethical and methodological dilemmas in social science interventions: Careful engagements in healthcare, museums, design and beyond. N. C. M. N. (ed.). Springer, Social Science, 21 p.

   Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Book chapter › Research › peer-review

2. Published

   Environmentality in biomedicine: microbiome research and the perspectival body

   Formosinho, Joana, Bencard, Adam & Whiteley, Louise, 2022, In: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. 91, p. 148-158 11 p.

   Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review

3. Published

   Coming Closer to Citizens? Frustrated Dialogue on the Danish Health Authority's Facebook Page During COVID-19

   Madvig, F., Achiam, Marianne, Adler-Nissen, Rebecca, Johansen, Nicklas & Whiteley, Louise, 2022, In: Frontiers in Communication. 7, 822471.

   Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review

4. Published

   Exhibiting health and medicine as culture

   Whiteley, Louise, Tybjerg, Karin, Pedersen, B. V., Bencard, Adam & Arnold, Ken, Mar 2017, In: Public Health Panorama. 3, 1, p. 59-68 10 p.

   Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review

5. Published

   Parent perspectives on biomarkers for OCD: Talking of difficult presents, desired pasts, and imagined futures

   Whiteley, Louise, Borgelt, E. L., Stewart, S. E. & Illes, J., Dec 2017, In: BioSocieties. 12, 4, p. 471–493 22 p.

   Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review