Dr Will Mason-Wilkes PhD

Dr Will Mason-Wilkes

Department of Mechanical Engineering
Assistant Professor in Engineering, Technology and Innovation in Society

Contact details

Email
w.mason-wilkes@bham.ac.uk
Twitter
@WillMasonWilkes
View my research portal
Address
School of Engineering (Y8)
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Will is a Science and Technology Studies (STS) scholar interested in media and popular culture representations of science & technology and the interactions and intersections between science & technology, media, citizens and society.

He has authored and co-authored several journal articles and chapters in edited books in the fields of STS, science communication and science & belief, and is currently co-editing a collection Most Adaptable to Change: Evolution and Religionin Global Popular Media. He leads a strand of research on the ESRC funded Future Flight Challenge Social Science Research Director: Phase 2 project, and has previously won competitive grant funding to lead his own project on atheist and non-religious people’s engagement with science media.

Will also co-hosts the Science & Belief in Society Podcast.

Qualifications

  • PhD, Sociology, Cardiff University, 2018
  • MSc (Distinction), Social Science Research Methods, Cardiff University, 2013
  • MA (Merit), History and Philosophy of Science, University of Leeds, 2011
  • BA Joint Hons. (Upper Second Class), History and Philosophy of Science & Theology and Religious Studies, 2010

Biography

Dr Will Mason-Wilkes is Assistant Professor in Engineering, Technology, Innovation and Society at the University of Birmingham (UoB), UK. Will is interested in the intersections of and interactions between science, technology, belief, media, public(s) and democracy. His current research focus is popular and media narratives of future flight and their impacts on innovation and public attitudes. Will's work has also explored international media representations of evolutionary science and religion; citizen science and its potentially exploitative arrangements; the relative affordances of face-to-face and remote communications; and atheist and non-religious people's engagement with popular representations of science.

Previously Will was a Research Fellow in Popular Media and Culture at UoB, and prior to this he worked as a Data and Research Analyst for the Welsh Government.

 

 

Postgraduate supervision

"Pop culture" and media representations of science, technology and innovation
"Pop culture" and media influences on/drivers of innovation
Public engagement with science, technology and innovation
Science communication theory and practice

Research

Dr Will Mason-Wilkes has a background in Science and Technologies Studies (STS). His current research interests include:

  • "Pop culture" and media representations of science, technology and innovation
  • "Pop culture" and media influences on/drivers of innovation
  • Public engagement with science, technology and innovation
  • Science communication theory and practice
  • Citizen science 
  • Science and (non)belief in popular culture and media

 

Publications

Highlight publications

Hall, A & Mason-Wilkes, W (eds) 2024, Most Adaptable to Change: Evolution and Religion in Global Popular Media. University of Pittsburgh Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.17102084

Riley, J & Mason-Wilkes, W 2024, 'Dark citizen science', Public Understanding of Science, vol. 33, no. 2, pp. 142-157. https://doi.org/10.1177/09636625231203470

Collins, H, Evans, R, Innes, M, Kennedy, EB, Mason-Wilkes, W & McLevey, J 2022, The Face-to-Face Principle: Science, Trust, Democracy and the Internet. Cardiff University. https://doi.org/10.18573/book7

Recent publications

Article

Mason-Wilkes, W 2023, 'Emphasizing uncertainty, celebrating community and valuing values: science communication remedies for the COVID-19 era and beyond', Interdisciplinary Science Reviews. https://doi.org/10.1080/03080188.2022.2152245

Collins, H, Leonard-Clarke, W & Mason-Wilkes, W 2023, 'Scientific conferences, socialization, and the Covid-19 pandemic: a conceptual and empirical enquiry', Social Studies of Science, pp. 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1177/03063127221138521

Mason-Wilkes, W 2020, 'Book Review: Elaine Howard Ecklund, David R Johnson, Brandon Vaidyanathan, Kirstin RW Matthews, Steven W Lewis, Robert A Thomson Jr and Di Di Secularity and Science: What Scientists Around the World Really Think About Religion', Public Understanding of Science, vol. 29, no. 6, pp. 666. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662520914192

Mason‐wilkes, W 2020, 'DIVINE DNA? “SECULAR” AND “RELIGIOUS” REPRESENTATIONS OF SCIENCE IN NONFICTION SCIENCE TELEVISION PROGRAMS', Zygon: journal of religion and science, vol. 55, no. 1, pp. 6-26. https://doi.org/10.1111/zygo.12574

Chapter (peer-reviewed)

Mason-Wilkes, W & Hall, A 2024, From Science and Humanism to Science as Religion: The Emerging Representation of Science as a Worldview in BBC Blue-Chip Documentaries. in A Hall & W Mason-Wilkes (eds), Most Adaptable to Change: Evolution and Religion in Global Popular Media. University of Pittsburgh Press, pp. 78-96. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.17102084.8

Mason-Wilkes, W 2024, The Case for an Explicit Normativity in Social Studies of Science and Belief: Lessons from STS. in ZT Kamwendo (ed.), Science and Religion: Approaches from Science and Technology Studies. 1 edn, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 77-102. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-66387-1_5

Elsdon-Baker, F & Mason-Wilkes, W 2019, The Sociological Study of Science and Religion in Context. in Science, Belief and Society: International Perspectives on Religion, Non-Religion and the Public Understanding of Science. Bristol University Press.

Chapter

Hall, A & Mason-Wilkes, W 2024, Introduction: Complexity, Geopolitics, and the Social Order: Introducing Multimedia Analysis into Global Histories of Evolution and Religion. in A Hall & W Mason-Wilkes (eds), Most Adaptable to Change: Evolution and Religion in Global Popular Media. University of Pittsburgh Press, pp. 3-16. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.17102084.4

Review article

Mason-Wilkes, W 2019, 'Book Review: Steve Fuller, Post-Truth: Knowledge as a Power Game', Sociology, vol. 53, no. 6, pp. 1198. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038519841830

View all publications in research portal