Seminar with Steven Epstein


Wednesday, October 29, 2025 - 09:00 to 10:15

The Crisis of Expertise, Revisited: How Lay Experts are Transforming the Politics of Knowledge and Authority 

With Steven Epstein 

Date: October 29, 2025.09.00 -10.15
Location: Copenhagen Business School, Kilevej 14 A, 2000 Frederiksberg, in Room K2.53 (2nd floor)

Abstract
It has become common to speak of the "crisis" of expertise and to link the phenomenon of growing distrust of experts with declining confidence in authorities of all sorts. To better understand and evaluate these perceptions of crisis, I focus attention on an underlying shift in the politics of knowledge and authority in the United States in recent decades that has transformed what it means to be an expert and who can plausibly serve as one: the rise to prominence of hybrid forms of "lay expertise." By considering examples especially in the domain of health - including challenges posed by knowledge-empowered social movements - I seek to provide a somewhat more hopeful account of the crisis of expertise: one that recognizes the risks of populist dismissal of experts but also emphasizes the potential virtues of democratic challenges to traditional expertise in the service of epistemic justice. 
The talk is hosted by Oddný and Pedro and supported by the Carlsberg grant MAKRO, and Head of Department funds. 

Biography
Steven Epstein is Professor of Sociology and John C. Shaffer Professor in the Humanities at Northwestern University. His research and teaching examine the contested production of expert and especially biomedical knowledge, with an emphasis on the interplay of social movements, experts, and health institutions, and with a focus on the politics of sexuality, gender, and race. His award-winning books include Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge (1996), Inclusion: The Politics of Difference in Medical research (2007), and The Quest for Sexual Health: How an Elusive Ideal Has Transformed Science, Politics, and Everyday Life (2022) 

Questions regarding the keynote can be sent to Oddný Helgadóttir oh.ioa@cbs.dk

The page was last edited by: Department of Organization // 10/15/2025