Research during a shopping trip

An interactive debate in Fields

A shopping trip to Fields need not only be about toothpaste, clothes, and a new TV, when associate professor Maja Horst, on Friday, 21st September, opens a 30-square-metre stem-cell network, right in the middle of the shopping centre.

Is it acceptable to use a 6-day-old human foetus as material for stem-cell research? Who should decide the boundaries of the research and the direction that it can take? These are just some of the questions that customers are confronted with when they step inside the Expectations Landscape, which is what the installation is called.

It can best be described as an interactive questionnaire that offers people the chance to take a walk through the public debate and see and discuss different attitudes to research and new technology. When you stand in the room, you register your answers by pressing a button, turning on a light, or by putting a ball in a hole.

Dialogue before results

Maja Horst researches the relationship between society and research, and she doesn't believe that we should only talk about research when the results are already on the table in the form of a book or an article.

- As a researcher, you have to create interest and awareness about your project so that you can have a dialogue with the significant parties, whether these are politicians, collaborating partners, or others. This dialogue is crucial so that you are aware of what society and those that will be using the research are expecting, says Maja Horst.

You can visit the exhibition in Fields on Friday, 21st September between 3.00 and 8.00 pm and Saturday, 22nd September, between 10.00 am and 5.00 pm.

The Expectations Landscape has been created through collaboration between social science researcher, Maja Horst, and designer, Birte Dalsgård. It has been set up with support from The Danish Research Council for the Humanities together with Copenhagen Business School.