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The Crisis of Expertise, Revisited: How Lay Experts are Transforming the Politics of Knowledge and Authority
Date and time
Wednesday 29. October 2025 at 09:00 to 10:15
Registration Deadline
Tuesday 28. October 2025 at 11:00
Location
K 2.53,
Kilevej 14 2nd Floor,
2300 Frederiksberg
K 2.53
Kilevej 14 2nd Floor
2300 Frederiksberg
The Crisis of Expertise, Revisited: How Lay Experts are Transforming the Politics of Knowledge and Authority
The Crisis of Expertise, Revisited: How Lay Experts are Transforming the Politics of Knowledge and Authority
Speaker: Steven EpsteinAbstract:
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 Helgadóttir and Pedro Monteiro and supported by the Carlsberg grant MAKRO and Head of Department funds.
Bio:
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).Event Location
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Organizer Contact Information
Copenhagen Business School
Phone: +45 3815 3815
seminar.ioa@cbs.dk
Registration
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Organizer Contact Information
Copenhagen Business School
Phone: +45 3815 3815
seminar.ioa@cbs.dk