Fern Elsdon-Baker

Dr Fern Elsdon-Baker is director of the Centre for Science, Knowledge and Belief in Society at Newman University, Birmingham and leads the Science and Religion: exploring the spectrum project an international research programme which explores public perceptions of evolutionary science and open minded ways in which we can communicate science within diverse contexts.

A lifelong atheist and who originally trained in environmental sciences, Fern's PhD was in the history and philosophy of evolutionary science. This and her subsequent research focused on theories of inheritance, science communication and its relationship to scientific knowledge production from the 1800s to present. In 2009 she published a book based on aspects of this research: Selfish Genius: How Richard Dawkins Rewrote Darwin's Legacy.

She briefly left academia from 2008 - 2012 to work for the British Council on large-scale international projects. In the first instance she worked as Head of the Darwin Now Project. Darwin Now was a multi-million pound global initiative running in 50 countries worldwide, which celebrated the life and work of Charles Darwin, as part of the international celebrations of the Darwin anniversaries in 2009. Subsequently, she directed the British Councils Belief in Dialogue Programme - a multi-regional portfolio of inter-cultural and interfaith dialogue projects.

www.sciencereligionspectrum.org

Represented by: Philip Patterson

Titles
The Selfish Genius (Icon Books, 2009)