Louise Whiteley

• Presentation
• Research outputs
• Keywords

I’m an Associate Professor in Medical Science Communication at Medical Museion and the NNF Center for Basic Metabolic Research, and my position involves research, teaching, and museum work. One of my key research interests is how biomedical research that implicates the mind affects peoples' understandings of themselves, in part through its representation in popular culture. A second key research interest is how museum exhibitions, artworks, and performance can engage with and 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'. Across both these themes, 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 am currently leading a research group project called Microbes on the Mind, funded by the Velux Foundation, and part of the team producing the exhibition and public engagement project The World is in You. 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 as a way of exploring boundaries between science, art, and cultural history exhibitions.

Selected publications

1. Published

   Exhibiting health and medicine as culture

   Whiteley, Louise, Tybjerg, Karin, Pedersen, Bente Vinge, 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

2. 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

3. Published

   Co-Curation as Hacking: Biohackers in Copenhagen’s Medical Museion

   Davies, S. R., Tybjerg, Karin, Whiteley, Louise & Söderqvist, Thomas, 2015, In: Curator: The Museum Journal. 58, 1, p. 117-131

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

4. Published

   ‘The house’ as a framing device for public engagement in STEM museums

   Whiteley, Louise, Stenslund, A., Arnold, Ken & Söderqvist, Thomas, Jul 2017, In: Museum & Society. 15, 2, p. 217-235 19 p.

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