The Promise of Science: Deliberating on biomedicine, health and democracy in the Ugandan parliament

这项拟议的研究通过乌干达科学能力建设的视角来探索科学和民主。虽然科学能力建设常常被视为一种公共利益，但人们对其在地方机构一级的做法和实施知之甚少，但它提出了对科学和卫生治理的全球化、发展做法的空间化以及自由民主和科学知识之间的关系的关切。与这些关切形成鲜明对比的是，迫切需要确保较贫穷人口的健康需求，并通过国际研究网络增进对影响世界人口的主要健康问题的了解和了解，如如何减轻环境变化对健康的影响、如何应对人口增长以及如何控制传染病。研究的重点是议员、议会工作人员和研究人员、捐助机构和研究组织在将生物医学和与健康有关的知识纳入议会事务方面的做法和观点。这项研究利用基于文本的文件分析、深入的半结构化访谈和委员会会议的观察性实地考察，建立了全球南部科学和卫生治理的案例研究。该项目考察了形成科学能力的过程，询问参与其中的不同参与者是如何想象“能力”的。通过这种方式，它探索了知识生产如何转化为政治沟通和行动，以及卫生、生物医学和民主化的轨迹如何在立法领域汇聚。政治机构越来越多地被要求审议具有重大技术和科学内容的问题。议会是重申国家在发展政策中的作用并传递民主火炬的重要机构。议会有可能将社会不同部门--专家、民间社会、企业、政策制定者和捐助者--聚集在一起，发展知情、公平和可持续的治理形式。然而，在乌干达这样的国家，人们对议会审议复杂问题的能力以及其审查政府的实际权力提出了质疑。这就是科学能力建设获得动力的地方。尽管干预非洲议会的理由似乎是合理的，但能力建设方案的实践者很难反思支撑其工作的假设，特别是知识与权力之间的关系；当地研究人员往往没有技能和知识来在科学/社会边界开展质疑捐助方案有效性的关键工作，并努力在具体情况下改进这些工作。该项目旨在制定一项解决这些差距的影响议程，通过这样做，能力建设本身。该项目旨在将研究转化为乌干达(包括研究参与者、社会科学家、科学家和研究人员、捐助者和民间社会组织)和英国用户(包括发展和科学智库、捐助机构以及在QMUL和其他大学从事类似领域工作的社会科学家)的决策和实践。与用户的交流将通过一种结构化的传播途径实现，包括发表2篇期刊文章和一本单独撰写的专著，在会议上发言，以及参加研讨会和阅读小组。此外，英国和乌干达的非学术用户将被邀请参加一系列四个知识交流活动，他们将被介绍并被要求从事研究设计和数据分析。这项研究将得到一个网页的支持，并将定期向用户发送简报，向他们通报在特定阶段的最新进展情况。

The proposed research explores science and democracy through the lens of scientific capacity building in Uganda. While scientific capacity building is often cast as a common good, its practices and implementation at the level of local institutions are little understood, and yet it broaches concerns about the globalisation of science and health governance, the spatialisation of development practices, and the relationship between liberal democracy and scientific knowledge. These concerns are contrasted against urgent calls to secure the health needs of poorer populations, and through international research networks, advance knowledge and understanding of major health issues affecting world populations, such as how to mitigate the health effects of environmental change, how to cope with growing populations, and how to contain infectious diseases. The research focusses on the practices and perspectives of parliamentarians, parliamentary staff and researchers, donor agencies and research organisations in incorporating biomedical and health-related knowledge into parliamentary business. Drawing on text-based analysis of documents, in-depth semi-structured interviews and observational fieldwork of committee meetings, the study builds up a case study of science and health governance in the global south. The project examines the processes that bring scientific capacity into being, asking how 'capacity' is imagined by the different actors involved. By this means, it explores how knowledge production is translated into political communication and action, and how trajectories of health, biomedicine and democratisation converge in a legislative arena.Political institutions are increasingly required to deliberate on issues that carry significant technical and scientific content. Parliaments emerge as important institutions that reassert the role of the state in development policy and carry the torch of democracy. Parliaments have the potential to bring together different sectors of society - experts, civil society, business, policymakers and donors - to develop informed, equitable and sustainable forms of governance. However, in a country such as Uganda, questions have been raised about the capacities of parliament to deliberate on complex issues as well as its actual power in scrutinising government. This is where scientific capacity building gains its impetus. While the rationale to intervene in African parliaments appears legitimate, practitioners of capacity building programmes struggle to reflect on the assumptions underpinning their work, in particular the relationship between knowledge and power; and local researchers are often not equipped with the skills and knowledge to do critical work at the science/society border that interrogates the effectiveness of donor programmes, and works to improve them in context. This project aims to develop an impact agenda that addresses these gaps, and by doing so, capacity builds itself. The project aims to translate the research into the policymaking and practices of Ugandan (which include research participants, social scientists, scientists and researchers, donor and civil society organisations) and UK-based users (which include think tanks on development and science, donor agencies, and social scientists working in similar areas based at QMUL and other universities). Communicating with users will be accomplished through a structured dissemination path that involves publishing 2 journal articles and one single authored monograph, presenting at conferences, and attending seminars and reading groups. In addition, non-academic users in the UK and Uganda will be invited to participate in a series of four knowledge exchange events, in which they will be introduced and asked to engage in research design and data analysis. The research will be supported by a webpage and regular briefings will be sent to users, updating them on its progress at specific stages.