1 00:00:00,180 --> 00:00:02,700 Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Oxford Martin School. 2 00:00:02,700 --> 00:00:09,990 My name is Charles Godfrey and the director, and it's my great pleasure to welcome two people who will be talking this evening. 3 00:00:09,990 --> 00:00:19,290 Claire Craig Claire is currently the provost of the Queen's College, but had a very distinguished career at the Royal Society and in government, 4 00:00:19,290 --> 00:00:25,080 and Sarah Dillon, professor of literature and the public humanities at the University of Cambridge. 5 00:00:25,080 --> 00:00:29,460 And they'll be talking about narrative evidence and public reasoning, 6 00:00:29,460 --> 00:00:39,090 and that's also the subject of a book they have written recently, and we'll have flyers outside if anyone is interested in that. 7 00:00:39,090 --> 00:00:46,380 And just before I invite them onto the stage, this talk is also being livestreamed and recorded. 8 00:00:46,380 --> 00:00:53,310 And if you're watching online and I know we've got a big online audience and crowd cost, 9 00:00:53,310 --> 00:00:58,140 you can ask a question and you'll see that, I think at the bottom of your screens. 10 00:00:58,140 --> 00:01:02,190 And what's more, you can also vote on other people's questions, 11 00:01:02,190 --> 00:01:13,290 and that will be very helpful for me when we come to the public discussion and we'll be taking comments from both within the hall and and virtually. 12 00:01:13,290 --> 00:01:25,530 So with no further ado, Claire and Sarah. Thank you very much, Charles. 13 00:01:25,530 --> 00:01:34,350 It's wonderful to be here. So we're going to do a brief double act to introduce the ideas of the book and then very much enjoy discussion with you. 14 00:01:34,350 --> 00:01:44,670 And we start from the presumption that public reasoning requires narrative evidence and that that a pandemic isn't only an epidemiological problem, 15 00:01:44,670 --> 00:01:54,000 that climate change is not just a matter of physics and the need to use all forms of evidence to be able to distinguish news from fake news. 16 00:01:54,000 --> 00:02:03,600 To find new ways to act well in the face of highly uncertain futures is more urgent now than it ever has been. 17 00:02:03,600 --> 00:02:13,890 Of course, all of us know at some level that narratives matter, but particularly in the context of the use of research based evidence. 18 00:02:13,890 --> 00:02:21,420 Policymakers and experts actually rarely ask exactly how or or why or what to do about it. 19 00:02:21,420 --> 00:02:30,240 And that's partly because incorporating narrative evidence robustly is actually not routinely straightforward. 20 00:02:30,240 --> 00:02:39,360 A powerful narrative in full flow, whether it's associated with a computational model or whether a novel is seductive. 21 00:02:39,360 --> 00:02:47,040 It's charismatic, it's unruly, it's dangerous. If you like, people can place too much confidence in them. 22 00:02:47,040 --> 00:02:51,780 Narratives badged as fiction can confusingly hold truths and narratives. 23 00:02:51,780 --> 00:02:56,910 Badged as truthful may in fact be fiction or downright wrong. 24 00:02:56,910 --> 00:03:04,740 There's also a lot of literature and discussion on how to tell narratives, but much less on how to listen to them. 25 00:03:04,740 --> 00:03:10,970 And that's where we want to make things different. 26 00:03:10,970 --> 00:03:17,180 So we argue, therefore, that public reasoning needs to start taking sort stories more seriously, 27 00:03:17,180 --> 00:03:26,690 that there are robust ways to do this that including evidence from stories, will actually broaden the evidence base, which is a good thing in itself. 28 00:03:26,690 --> 00:03:32,300 But it will also then well, strengthen the use and creation of other forms of evidence, 29 00:03:32,300 --> 00:03:38,150 including scientific evidence, even though some may may feel that. 30 00:03:38,150 --> 00:03:43,580 And as you can tell from what I've just done, we're using the terms, story and narrative interchangeably. 31 00:03:43,580 --> 00:03:53,390 And in both cases, take that to mean a an internally consistent causal account of of some system with agents in it. 32 00:03:53,390 --> 00:04:00,530 Stories are more provocative term, partly because it's so often used to convey distrust or to trivialise something. 33 00:04:00,530 --> 00:04:03,170 But whether it's called a narrative or a story, 34 00:04:03,170 --> 00:04:11,180 what's at stake is a thing that is about a form of sense making in the face of complexity and uncertainty. 35 00:04:11,180 --> 00:04:18,920 So we define story listening, which is, we think, a new word as the theory and practise of gathering narrative evidence in the 36 00:04:18,920 --> 00:04:23,970 context of public reasoning and always as part of a pluralistic evidence base. 37 00:04:23,970 --> 00:04:28,640 And what we're trying to do here is to create the conditions under which the 38 00:04:28,640 --> 00:04:35,480 task of critical listening to stories is easier is expected becomes endemic. 39 00:04:35,480 --> 00:04:40,310 And to do that by providing a tool which enables those who study stories and 40 00:04:40,310 --> 00:04:44,750 those who might want to get the evidential value from them to have more of a 41 00:04:44,750 --> 00:04:49,400 common language and get that value without the kind of plunge to a post-truth 42 00:04:49,400 --> 00:04:53,750 free for all or any weakening of the credibility of other forms of evidence. 43 00:04:53,750 --> 00:04:59,600 And that framework rests on the definition of four functions of stories which Sarah will introduce in a moment. 44 00:04:59,600 --> 00:05:04,430 But as we go through, please remember these these things on the on the right here. 45 00:05:04,430 --> 00:05:09,200 This is about listening. A lot about telling. It's about cognitive valuing stories. 46 00:05:09,200 --> 00:05:13,730 It's not about how they make you feel. And it's about collective knowledge and actions. 47 00:05:13,730 --> 00:05:20,780 Not just whether reading one particular story or report changes one individual's mind on on on an issue. 48 00:05:20,780 --> 00:05:25,400 So it's time before functions. Brilliant. Thanks to hello everyone. 49 00:05:25,400 --> 00:05:28,580 How lovely to be doing things in person again. So wonderful. 50 00:05:28,580 --> 00:05:32,510 So I've got the unenviable job of trying to do the bulk of the book in about five minutes. 51 00:05:32,510 --> 00:05:39,710 So here goes. And so, as Clare said, the story listening framework rests on a definition of four functions and stories. 52 00:05:39,710 --> 00:05:44,720 And when we decided to write the book and we wanted to make a case of the cognitive audio stories, 53 00:05:44,720 --> 00:05:51,770 we realised we needed a really rigorous grounding or foundation in the kinds of functions that they serve. 54 00:05:51,770 --> 00:05:56,600 So this is based on a synthesis and a rigorous literature review across humanities 55 00:05:56,600 --> 00:06:00,110 and social science disciplines and their theories of the functions of stories. 56 00:06:00,110 --> 00:06:03,650 So the first one is points of view. 57 00:06:03,650 --> 00:06:11,030 So story listening provides new points of view to inform the framing of the target system and of policy debates. 58 00:06:11,030 --> 00:06:17,630 So this is not about politics or state code of consultation or deliberative democracy, although it links with all of these. 59 00:06:17,630 --> 00:06:22,370 It's saying that the policy and the public framing determines what is taken to be. 60 00:06:22,370 --> 00:06:26,870 The target system was taken to be the part of the world that matters to a particular 61 00:06:26,870 --> 00:06:31,940 issue and that it determines what forms of evidence are expected to be called upon. 62 00:06:31,940 --> 00:06:39,170 It also determines what stories are considered most relevant, and they in a kind of feedback loop that influence the framing. 63 00:06:39,170 --> 00:06:44,360 So to take one example from one of the case studies in the book, which is artificial intelligence. 64 00:06:44,360 --> 00:06:50,750 If we took narrative evidence, for instance, from the many stories that are about alien intelligences, 65 00:06:50,750 --> 00:06:58,040 this could convey something of the breadth of ways in which intelligence might be redefined in light of new technologies, 66 00:06:58,040 --> 00:07:05,660 and it could help reframe debate around the societal benefits and harms of distributed automated systems, 67 00:07:05,660 --> 00:07:10,550 rather than, for instance, focussing on the potential benefits or harms of humanoid entities. 68 00:07:10,550 --> 00:07:20,420 That might be much more charismatic, like the Terminator, but which are possibly much less useful in framing public reasoning about A.I. 69 00:07:20,420 --> 00:07:27,080 The second function is that stories create and consolidate collective identities, so the story listening, 70 00:07:27,080 --> 00:07:32,810 we claim, offers new ways to explore what those collective identities are and what they mean. 71 00:07:32,810 --> 00:07:39,770 And this can be done in a number of ways. So sociologically gathered narrative evidence about story imbibing. 72 00:07:39,770 --> 00:07:43,460 That's the word we use to mean the taking in the stories in different mediums. 73 00:07:43,460 --> 00:07:49,460 So reading doesn't work if you're watching films, and viewing doesn't work if you're if you're, you know, engaging with literature. 74 00:07:49,460 --> 00:07:52,650 So story imbibing is the word that we use. 75 00:07:52,650 --> 00:07:58,940 So if we gathered narrative evidence about collective story imbibing and story sharing amongst different groups, 76 00:07:58,940 --> 00:08:04,940 this could enhance our understanding of how those groups are constituted and how they behave or how they might behave. 77 00:08:04,940 --> 00:08:10,190 And that could be the collective characteristics of A.I. researchers, which is something I've done an OR. 78 00:08:10,190 --> 00:08:16,850 Search on all how various publics might behave during a pandemic or when they're engaging other kinds of political activity, 79 00:08:16,850 --> 00:08:21,860 for instance, climate activism and story content matters here as well. 80 00:08:21,860 --> 00:08:28,370 So a novel such as Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver, which some of you Kingsolver, some of you may have read. 81 00:08:28,370 --> 00:08:32,600 It's set in rural Tennessee actually prompts really interesting questions about 82 00:08:32,600 --> 00:08:37,760 the definition and direction of collective agency in the face of climate change 83 00:08:37,760 --> 00:08:41,360 questions that could end the explorations that could complement more Orthodox 84 00:08:41,360 --> 00:08:46,850 notions of how we might incorporate group identities into public reasoning. 85 00:08:46,850 --> 00:08:50,810 And very recently, the British Academy produced a report in May this year, 86 00:08:50,810 --> 00:08:55,490 which takes several disciplinary approaches to defining and exploring collective 87 00:08:55,490 --> 00:09:00,140 identities that link to people's behaviours with response to vaccination and story. 88 00:09:00,140 --> 00:09:06,570 Listening, for instance, could have made a very valuable contribution to that kind of interdisciplinary exercise. 89 00:09:06,570 --> 00:09:11,230 And the third function is models and modelling. 90 00:09:11,230 --> 00:09:23,170 So stories, sorry stories concern the way that public reasoning like life rests on implicit models of target systems. 91 00:09:23,170 --> 00:09:27,940 So all models are fictitious, even scientific ones in the sense that to be useful, 92 00:09:27,940 --> 00:09:34,070 they have to be abstract abstractions of the target system, not direct representations of it. 93 00:09:34,070 --> 00:09:35,770 There's a famous book as short stories. 94 00:09:35,770 --> 00:09:42,260 Some of you may know where they decide to create a model that's a map of the world, and then it becomes so big that it actually covers the world. 95 00:09:42,260 --> 00:09:50,950 So it's a kind of cautionary tale about the fact that the map is not the territory, as Mary Morgan and other philosophers of science explored. 96 00:09:50,950 --> 00:09:56,380 And that story can play stories, play a part in the creation and use of non-narrative models. 97 00:09:56,380 --> 00:09:59,050 There's also we look at the work of Lloyd and Sheppard, 98 00:09:59,050 --> 00:10:07,570 which would put their storyline approaches to computational modelling of extreme weather events and stories act as part of scientific models, 99 00:10:07,570 --> 00:10:13,060 shaping outcomes in areas such as climate change, economics and epidemiology. 100 00:10:13,060 --> 00:10:20,680 But one of the perhaps more radical claims in the book is that stories also function as narrative models in their own right. 101 00:10:20,680 --> 00:10:27,100 So one of the examples we give is Jane Austen. If you look at her novels and you think of them as narrative models, 102 00:10:27,100 --> 00:10:33,760 they can provide information about the target system of middle class social life in the early 19th century. 103 00:10:33,760 --> 00:10:41,650 But of course, they also miss some things out from that target system. For instance, colonialism and in a more contemporary example, 104 00:10:41,650 --> 00:10:51,520 Kim Stanley Robinson's novel Aurora is a really interesting narrative model of plausible social and behavioural conditions for a zero waste world. 105 00:10:51,520 --> 00:10:58,540 Not just how to balance materials cycles, but what kinds of governance and skills we might need in that world. 106 00:10:58,540 --> 00:11:07,210 And since we wrote about Kim's work in the book, it was interesting to see him speaking at Cop 26 in Glasgow. 107 00:11:07,210 --> 00:11:15,820 Stories may be the only way. In fact, we claim of collectively thinking through the potential behaviours of complex systems in some cases. 108 00:11:15,820 --> 00:11:17,470 And as always with us, it's both. 109 00:11:17,470 --> 00:11:24,650 And the story doesn't provide scientific knowledge, but narrative evidence can enable what we call surrogates of reasoning. 110 00:11:24,650 --> 00:11:31,120 That's the reason you are able to perform on the basis of a model about things about which there might be no scientific 111 00:11:31,120 --> 00:11:39,690 knowledge or an alternative approach to and perspective on things that can also be known through scientific means. 112 00:11:39,690 --> 00:11:47,640 And then the final function before I hand back to Claire is the story listening enables new forms of rigorous anticipation. 113 00:11:47,640 --> 00:11:53,550 If you look back at the 1990s, for instance, you can try a whole range of novels, for instance, by Don DeLillo, 114 00:11:53,550 --> 00:12:00,630 which provided narrative evidence that anticipated the financial fragility that only became manifest a decade later. 115 00:12:00,630 --> 00:12:06,990 Or Robert Shiller's recent book includes stories as functional elements of anticipation of market behaviours. 116 00:12:06,990 --> 00:12:09,390 Or we went back to the mid-20th century. 117 00:12:09,390 --> 00:12:15,120 Neville shoots on the beach alongside Herman Kahn's quantitative modelling of death rates could be understood to 118 00:12:15,120 --> 00:12:23,700 be attempting now to future futures models of the consequences of nuclear war that inform policy in the 1960s. 119 00:12:23,700 --> 00:12:28,890 So to wrap up the four functions then cut a thread of the four functions is how the most 120 00:12:28,890 --> 00:12:35,430 charismatic stories can draw attention to themselves and away from the spaces around them. 121 00:12:35,430 --> 00:12:41,280 So this is a kind of cautionary element and stories about human or humanoid robots, for instance, 122 00:12:41,280 --> 00:12:49,500 that I've mentioned instead of stories about distributed systems or stories about climate change as a matter exclusively for the physical sciences. 123 00:12:49,500 --> 00:12:58,680 And we call these narrative deficits a narrative lock ins that can preclude public examination of a full set of possible and systems, 124 00:12:58,680 --> 00:13:04,590 models or futures, and also exclude some collective identities while prioritising others. 125 00:13:04,590 --> 00:13:09,780 So careful story listening can show up the spaces left by absent stories, 126 00:13:09,780 --> 00:13:16,460 and the can help balance the forces that can cause some to dominate a particular time and place. 127 00:13:16,460 --> 00:13:21,380 I'll hand back to Claire to talk about why all this matters. 128 00:13:21,380 --> 00:13:28,790 So as the former practitioner, half of the party, I get the I get the the so what? 129 00:13:28,790 --> 00:13:34,220 And this is the second one. So what? So how can this be used? 130 00:13:34,220 --> 00:13:40,550 Practically a basic story listening exercise would take an existing policy issue and useful 131 00:13:40,550 --> 00:13:45,640 functions as a framework to draw out evidence that's available from existing stories. 132 00:13:45,640 --> 00:13:52,370 And we're discussing a number of options here and would welcome ideas in the in the discussions day. 133 00:13:52,370 --> 00:14:02,220 Basically, however story it is and could be used as part of the existing systems in the same way as any other form of academically rigorous evidence. 134 00:14:02,220 --> 00:14:06,500 So as a scholar of sort of science and technology studies, 135 00:14:06,500 --> 00:14:12,230 Sheila Justin.tv and others point out that actually means that there isn't one way that doing 136 00:14:12,230 --> 00:14:17,930 this kind of evidence gathering and using is very context specific and culturally specific, 137 00:14:17,930 --> 00:14:23,690 and the exact mechanisms depend on the policy issue. The framing, the governance and so on. 138 00:14:23,690 --> 00:14:32,630 But to give some examples, as I do here, National Academies regularly make reports which draw on multiple disciplines during the pandemic. 139 00:14:32,630 --> 00:14:40,700 It was interesting to see the UK government chief scientific adviser not only having the emergency mechanism sage, 140 00:14:40,700 --> 00:14:50,180 but also commissioning the British Academy to do some work from the humanities perspective on on the long, on the long term implications of COVID. 141 00:14:50,180 --> 00:14:54,110 And that's the kind of study that could include story listening. 142 00:14:54,110 --> 00:15:00,830 The UK government, like many others, has all sorts of ecosystems of advisers and councils and committees. 143 00:15:00,830 --> 00:15:08,030 Any of these could use it. One of the discussions we've had recently was about perhaps this has been the kind of policy wonks coming back after me. 144 00:15:08,030 --> 00:15:12,890 But the UK government has a Acquah book and a magenta book, 145 00:15:12,890 --> 00:15:15,980 and one determines the quality of the analysis that is considered to be 146 00:15:15,980 --> 00:15:20,060 essential for government and the other the quality of the evaluation of policy. 147 00:15:20,060 --> 00:15:23,900 Both of those set out the kind of standards of rigour that are needed and you could imagine, 148 00:15:23,900 --> 00:15:30,380 including different forms of evidence in those and then other things like the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, 149 00:15:30,380 --> 00:15:36,560 which has done some very nice work recently. And global structures through to the IPCC and the International Science Council. 150 00:15:36,560 --> 00:15:40,850 So that's almost like a kind of whistle stop tour of various specific mechanisms. 151 00:15:40,850 --> 00:15:43,520 More generally, the Peter Gluckman, 152 00:15:43,520 --> 00:15:51,530 who is a former government chief scientific adviser in New Zealand and now the president of the International Science Council, 153 00:15:51,530 --> 00:16:01,520 divides does does generalise in terms of evidence gathering in public reasoning and to form an insult to underlying strands, synthesis and brokerage. 154 00:16:01,520 --> 00:16:11,450 So on the synthesis, this is part of the move away from considering the evidence in public reasoning should be provided by single reports. 155 00:16:11,450 --> 00:16:17,960 However, eminent single pieces of research or by single researchers, so will as what reasoning really needs, 156 00:16:17,960 --> 00:16:24,050 which is overviews, synthesis of the evidence within a discipline and across disciplines. 157 00:16:24,050 --> 00:16:29,780 And indeed, one of the most significant developments in UK provision of synthesis was the Oxford Martin School's 158 00:16:29,780 --> 00:16:35,870 own restatements that included studies on things like the evidence on budget and radiation, 159 00:16:35,870 --> 00:16:41,780 and the story listening itself is a form of synthesis and could therefore be incorporated in such work. 160 00:16:41,780 --> 00:16:52,190 And then this brokerage. So all of the mechanisms on the left are partly delivered or informed by the kind of relationships and conversations that 161 00:16:52,190 --> 00:17:01,220 regularly go on between decision makers and experts and people who work on the boundaries of academia and of government. 162 00:17:01,220 --> 00:17:10,970 And they do that from within the private sector, within NGOs or within the public sector. 163 00:17:10,970 --> 00:17:15,080 And they're involved in in an ecosystem, in brokerage. 164 00:17:15,080 --> 00:17:21,350 That means that the quality of the questions that are being asked on both sides policy and evidence 165 00:17:21,350 --> 00:17:27,650 and research creation get better over time that people share an understanding of what matters, 166 00:17:27,650 --> 00:17:35,330 what kinds of questions might matter in the future, and also better able to communicate with each other because they've spent time 167 00:17:35,330 --> 00:17:39,380 learning a little bit about each other's worlds and in these sorts of areas. 168 00:17:39,380 --> 00:17:49,100 It's still the case that by and large, the the mechanisms and the brokerage practises are stronger in terms of relationship with government, 169 00:17:49,100 --> 00:17:54,050 in the sciences and in the social sciences than they are in the humanities. 170 00:17:54,050 --> 00:18:01,890 So we're back there to talk about that. Yes, so Claire has done the. 171 00:18:01,890 --> 00:18:10,200 So what from the kind of practitioner perspective as a scholar of literature and someone very committed and interested in the public humanities. 172 00:18:10,200 --> 00:18:17,020 And so what I'm doing is why this matters for the humanities. 173 00:18:17,020 --> 00:18:25,300 So for story listening to put into practise is Clare's talked about existing advisory ecosystems and practises. 174 00:18:25,300 --> 00:18:31,060 Don't, we think, need to fundamentally change the need to expand and become more capacious to include 175 00:18:31,060 --> 00:18:36,520 different forms of evidence and knowledge and experts from a wider range of disciplines? 176 00:18:36,520 --> 00:18:39,100 And actually, what we've encountered is this is not an original claim. 177 00:18:39,100 --> 00:18:46,330 People know this needs to happen, and we're hoping the story listening offers a rigorous framework to start helping it happen. 178 00:18:46,330 --> 00:18:51,910 What's needed, then, is perhaps less a change of systems than in some instances, a change of minds. 179 00:18:51,910 --> 00:18:59,680 And the same might also be said for the adaptations needed in the mindsets of individual humanities, academics and scientists and decision makers. 180 00:18:59,680 --> 00:19:03,220 And I'm going to take those each and turn to wrap up. 181 00:19:03,220 --> 00:19:10,300 So humanities academics, I think more generally need to think about what narrative evidence might mean and their disciplines. 182 00:19:10,300 --> 00:19:17,530 So we've developed ours primarily because of my disciplinary expertise out of a kind of literary studies context. 183 00:19:17,530 --> 00:19:22,480 But we're very curious to hear how narrative evidence might that other humanities disciplines, 184 00:19:22,480 --> 00:19:27,850 whether under a different name and whether a different framework is needed to explain 185 00:19:27,850 --> 00:19:32,950 and foreground the types of evidence that different humanities disciplines produce. 186 00:19:32,950 --> 00:19:38,470 We also think that we need to expand on the notion of the kind of lone public intellectual which 187 00:19:38,470 --> 00:19:45,620 has historically dominated humanities sort of self conceptions of think about a more persuasive, 188 00:19:45,620 --> 00:19:49,600 pervasive and understanding of the role of the public humanities. 189 00:19:49,600 --> 00:19:53,950 And on the previous slide, you may have seen Roger Cokie's book on the honest broker. 190 00:19:53,950 --> 00:19:57,520 And we think there's very much a case for mapping his different categories with the 191 00:19:57,520 --> 00:20:02,680 way in which a scientist can invent games with government onto humanities scholars. 192 00:20:02,680 --> 00:20:10,600 So rather than just being pure humanists or as many are issue advocates, what would it mean to have humanities arbiters? 193 00:20:10,600 --> 00:20:17,620 What would it mean to have humanities, honest brokers and a stumbling block here might be quite entrenched. 194 00:20:17,620 --> 00:20:23,470 So self-conception of the humanities as resides its value residing on an in 195 00:20:23,470 --> 00:20:28,810 its oppositional and critique situation in relation to structures of power, 196 00:20:28,810 --> 00:20:39,130 be they state or corporate or even universities. And one of the arguments we make again both and is that, yes, the humanities. 197 00:20:39,130 --> 00:20:45,700 In fact, scholarship in general has value as an independent site of opposition and critique. 198 00:20:45,700 --> 00:20:53,590 But it also can be a valuable site of knowledge production of use to existing structures and institutions of public reasoning and decision making, 199 00:20:53,590 --> 00:21:01,660 and to start to think that to collaborate doesn't necessarily mean to relinquish the capacity to critique. 200 00:21:01,660 --> 00:21:08,560 As far as scientists are concerned for story listening to be effectively integrated also, 201 00:21:08,560 --> 00:21:14,290 we think, requires an expansion of what is considered to constitute expertise. 202 00:21:14,290 --> 00:21:22,300 So scientists frequently appeal to the notion of the scientific method as the basis for the rigour and the distinctive character of their advice, 203 00:21:22,300 --> 00:21:29,980 and as the basis on which expert advice can be distinguished from statements based simply on the personal wealth is the expert. 204 00:21:29,980 --> 00:21:36,190 Now, there may be no such simply established thing as the humanities method that might be 205 00:21:36,190 --> 00:21:40,420 considered equivalent to the scientific methods or the randomised controlled trial, 206 00:21:40,420 --> 00:21:48,760 but the guarantees of rigour in the humanities. I don't think we don't think actually that much different as those from the sciences, 207 00:21:48,760 --> 00:21:53,600 and they're also based in the trustworthiness of systems rather than individuals. 208 00:21:53,600 --> 00:21:59,080 So things like robust literature reviews detailed close attention to the object of study 209 00:21:59,080 --> 00:22:04,600 using the tools and methods appropriate to that object and discovery of new objects of study, 210 00:22:04,600 --> 00:22:09,730 evidence based conclusions, peer review, disciplinary interrogation and cumulative knowledge. 211 00:22:09,730 --> 00:22:15,340 These are all things that constitute the scientific method. They're all things that constitute part of the humanities method. 212 00:22:15,340 --> 00:22:21,190 If we were to call it that. So explaining this might not be as straightforward in the sciences, 213 00:22:21,190 --> 00:22:25,810 but we need to explain it more as humanities scholars and to make the case that 214 00:22:25,810 --> 00:22:30,850 therefore there's there's a there's it's not irrational to include humanities 215 00:22:30,850 --> 00:22:37,660 evidence within pluralistic evidence spaces and to make the case very strongly 216 00:22:37,660 --> 00:22:41,920 that methods need to be appropriate to what one is trying to understand. 217 00:22:41,920 --> 00:22:44,420 So one would know more uses since I knew I was going to be. 218 00:22:44,420 --> 00:22:52,090 I'd say this a synchrotron to study a novel than one would use narrative logic to study an atom. 219 00:22:52,090 --> 00:22:56,860 To conclude, then we're already up to begin to include narrative evidence. 220 00:22:56,860 --> 00:23:04,210 Emphatically, as an import, an important first step for decision makers is to develop what we call narrative literacy, 221 00:23:04,210 --> 00:23:13,840 a level of narrative literacy that precludes false certainty about stories and understands the need for and value of narrative expertise. 222 00:23:13,840 --> 00:23:18,250 So just as a generalist handles a bank account or carries an umbrella but wouldn't 223 00:23:18,250 --> 00:23:22,690 attempt to model future interest rates or global average surface temperatures 224 00:23:22,690 --> 00:23:27,970 so experts needed who can provide narrative evidence about how stories are functioning 225 00:23:27,970 --> 00:23:33,460 and with what effect and widespread narrative literacy in decision makers, 226 00:23:33,460 --> 00:23:42,970 but also in citizens. More broadly, in academics and scientists and advisors, means being respectful of stories, but not over respectful. 227 00:23:42,970 --> 00:23:51,040 So knowing that, as Claire said, alongside that potentially seductive, persuasive, delightful or harmful emotional effects, 228 00:23:51,040 --> 00:23:56,830 it's really important to ask what cognitive and collective values stories might have. 229 00:23:56,830 --> 00:23:59,920 And if the public good at state warrants it, 230 00:23:59,920 --> 00:24:08,200 that it's worth seeking and building capacity for narrative evidence in whatever ways you have opened to you wherever you are situated. 231 00:24:08,200 --> 00:24:14,580 Because more often than not, a story about a robot is not only always about the robot. 232 00:24:14,580 --> 00:24:25,860 Thank you. Come and sit down. 233 00:24:25,860 --> 00:24:33,930 That was brilliant, absolutely fascinating. And it is just wonderful to see both in your talk and in the book as well, 234 00:24:33,930 --> 00:24:40,090 just the genuine dialogue between the humanities and the natural sciences and things which we all talk about is important, 235 00:24:40,090 --> 00:24:47,620 but it's genuinely hard to do. So I get the privilege of asking a couple of questions to begin with. 236 00:24:47,620 --> 00:24:58,420 I'm Claire. I was asking if you could, so I can ask you if you could sort of give a worked example of why you think that narrative? 237 00:24:58,420 --> 00:25:08,880 The listing story listening could really be useful in the in in decision making and feel free to make it up. 238 00:25:08,880 --> 00:25:14,580 But just to give us an example of how you might see it working in practise. 239 00:25:14,580 --> 00:25:18,000 So there are there are several. 240 00:25:18,000 --> 00:25:27,330 I think one would be the one that Sarah mentioned alluded to to. 241 00:25:27,330 --> 00:25:29,700 If you look at I'm on the government, on a council, 242 00:25:29,700 --> 00:25:36,000 you look at all of the massive discussions going on about the governance of A.I. must be distributed 243 00:25:36,000 --> 00:25:43,740 across sectors and really quite hard to even begin to conceptualise what's happening now. 244 00:25:43,740 --> 00:25:52,380 Then a story listening exercise about the ways in the stories about distributed decision making in, say, 245 00:25:52,380 --> 00:26:02,550 the area of impacts on employment would actually bring out potentially new ways of organising labour in particular areas. 246 00:26:02,550 --> 00:26:08,310 Or it was. It would bring out ways in which people are already beginning to think about new 247 00:26:08,310 --> 00:26:13,680 forms of corporate body because those sorts of stories are already out there, 248 00:26:13,680 --> 00:26:15,540 some of them bunch of science fiction. 249 00:26:15,540 --> 00:26:23,190 Some of them are, in fact, the kind of stories that people are telling in a very anthropological sense that they're just being spoken yesterday. 250 00:26:23,190 --> 00:26:27,240 Some rather interesting work generating stories amongst people whose jobs were at threat. 251 00:26:27,240 --> 00:26:36,840 So if you pull those out, then what you would get would be some questions and some ideas that you could then look at and they might. 252 00:26:36,840 --> 00:26:40,980 We're thinking about the next the next stage of governance, 253 00:26:40,980 --> 00:26:48,810 of the use of AI systems in decision making in the public sector, in crime scene, predictive crime or in welfare. 254 00:26:48,810 --> 00:26:54,240 What kinds of ways? What kind of questions do we need to ask about what those new models might be? 255 00:26:54,240 --> 00:26:59,040 You have some pictures from the from the stories that you could that you could set alongside of them. 256 00:26:59,040 --> 00:27:04,320 So at the moment, we look at theory with look at our gut instinct and then make policy based on that. 257 00:27:04,320 --> 00:27:10,410 But if we actually went out and listened to the narratives some people were telling about each other, we would make better decisions. 258 00:27:10,410 --> 00:27:14,310 Yes, it's really interesting that you start with that question, though, 259 00:27:14,310 --> 00:27:18,630 because the book was published in November last year and we thought that we were going 260 00:27:18,630 --> 00:27:23,340 to have to spend a year or more sort of convincing people that the of the arguments. 261 00:27:23,340 --> 00:27:28,290 And very quickly, actually, the question that we've got repeatedly is how would this work in practise? 262 00:27:28,290 --> 00:27:36,030 So we feel like we've been fast forwarded pleasantly into thinking about what it actually looks like in practise. 263 00:27:36,030 --> 00:27:37,710 And that's why we're trying to do some projects, 264 00:27:37,710 --> 00:27:47,250 which will be kind of proof of concept to show that and also why we want to make it happen for real rather than just doing these things. 265 00:27:47,250 --> 00:27:50,700 The other area where there's been a lot of discussion of this topic is economics, 266 00:27:50,700 --> 00:27:55,770 and you mentioned Robert Schiller's book and John K. and Mervyn King have recently written about it. 267 00:27:55,770 --> 00:28:00,120 John King actually spoke about it here quite recently. 268 00:28:00,120 --> 00:28:07,950 Now, when I read the economics and narrative economics that strikes me as storytelling rather than story listening, 269 00:28:07,950 --> 00:28:14,070 and I have a problem to see how it will be operationalised in economics now. 270 00:28:14,070 --> 00:28:15,750 I know you're not talking about economics, 271 00:28:15,750 --> 00:28:25,200 but do you do you have any further feeling about how what you're writing and how it engages with narrative economics? 272 00:28:25,200 --> 00:28:37,320 And so the shoulders poking in parties, in our terminology as narratives, as data or stories, as data? 273 00:28:37,320 --> 00:28:41,820 And in a sense, he's talking about using stories as data for models. 274 00:28:41,820 --> 00:28:50,250 I think the potentially more interesting or more distinct area would be in some work as a again comes from science fiction. 275 00:28:50,250 --> 00:28:56,010 We don't only talk about science fiction, but it's often the easiest to appeal to immediately by Wet By, 276 00:28:56,010 --> 00:29:01,890 edited by William Davis, which is how do you create new, 277 00:29:01,890 --> 00:29:10,050 basically new new models of organisations of businesses in that can deal with some of the changes that are happening in markets. 278 00:29:10,050 --> 00:29:15,210 So it's about disruptive structures as opposed to the stories of data, which is something slightly different. 279 00:29:15,210 --> 00:29:21,750 But it does do some story in a single. They wouldn't use that word in the sense that my memory is. 280 00:29:21,750 --> 00:29:22,500 As part of the book, 281 00:29:22,500 --> 00:29:32,850 where he's talking about the way in which a kind of a narco international narrative has created a collective identity around bitcoin. 282 00:29:32,850 --> 00:29:39,180 And so if you think about the functions he's thinking about the way in which we what we call non textual narratives. 283 00:29:39,180 --> 00:29:43,530 So we differentiate between textual stories, which kind of embedded and curated, 284 00:29:43,530 --> 00:29:47,010 which might align with things like films and novels and non textual stories, 285 00:29:47,010 --> 00:29:53,280 which might be oral stories that circulate either between human beings in the same room or on social media. 286 00:29:53,280 --> 00:30:02,040 And I think so does does story. Listen to non textual narratives in that book, particularly, I think, around collective identities. 287 00:30:02,040 --> 00:30:06,960 But there's more there's more that could be done, and you could incorporate textual stories as well. 288 00:30:06,960 --> 00:30:11,760 So I'm going to ask a final question, then go to the audience and online. 289 00:30:11,760 --> 00:30:20,130 And you made a very interesting point about the different traditional traditions within the social science and humanities, 290 00:30:20,130 --> 00:30:28,680 about engagement and critique. And that's an issue that we face in the in the modern school where we are quite often policy focussed. 291 00:30:28,680 --> 00:30:34,500 And some of our colleagues in the humanities and social sciences feel very uncomfortable about actually getting 292 00:30:34,500 --> 00:30:41,890 it and getting involved in policy on the grounds that it might undermine their independence as a critique. 293 00:30:41,890 --> 00:30:47,010 And so could you elaborate a bit on a bit more on how you see those two different? 294 00:30:47,010 --> 00:30:55,360 And I should say equally valid approaches within the social science and humanities working together is that they remain separate and complementary? 295 00:30:55,360 --> 00:31:03,090 Or is there a role for them to come together? Do you think it might work if we take that, it's about plurality. 296 00:31:03,090 --> 00:31:11,160 So there's no sense in which the argument of the book is that humanities scholars can't be pure humanist and that they can't 297 00:31:11,160 --> 00:31:21,300 be issue advocates and and Pilkey very rightly says that issue advocacy is a really important role for academics to play. 298 00:31:21,300 --> 00:31:28,470 It's again of both, and it's like, but we're limiting ourselves if we only stay in those two roles as a collective. 299 00:31:28,470 --> 00:31:33,390 So it may be that different individuals are comfortable playing different roles. 300 00:31:33,390 --> 00:31:39,690 It may be that the same individual is happy to do different roles at different points in their career, 301 00:31:39,690 --> 00:31:47,750 but that as a kind of collective ecosystem of the humanities, we can expand and we could expand and. 302 00:31:47,750 --> 00:31:52,550 And I don't think it compliments it, compromises academic independence. 303 00:31:52,550 --> 00:32:02,150 I think it does question some of the narratives that were embedded in the humanities about our value, and maybe that's no bad thing, actually. 304 00:32:02,150 --> 00:32:08,570 And it can it can really enhance your scholarly work because I know from having done this kind of collaboration. 305 00:32:08,570 --> 00:32:16,040 So it's not to undermine what is already being done, but to say, can we also do more? 306 00:32:16,040 --> 00:32:26,720 And in a kind of honest brokerage role, the idea is to just provide the evidence to provide the the best possible synthesis of the available evidence. 307 00:32:26,720 --> 00:32:30,410 It's not about saying and therefore this is the decision that you should make. 308 00:32:30,410 --> 00:32:38,150 And actually, I think if more humans were forced to take that normative element away from that work, 309 00:32:38,150 --> 00:32:42,890 it might produce some quite interesting, different scholarship as well. Thank you. 310 00:32:42,890 --> 00:32:51,260 Who would like to ask the first question we have? Do we have a microphone, clara in the front here? 311 00:32:51,260 --> 00:33:01,340 We'll take two questions. Forgive me for pointing at you rudely like this. 312 00:33:01,340 --> 00:33:11,500 OK, thank you so much, sir and Claire, that's really fascinating. My question relates to the marketing of narratives. 313 00:33:11,500 --> 00:33:16,030 I think everybody who's tried to publish a book knows you're more likely to get published of 314 00:33:16,030 --> 00:33:21,160 something along the lines of this has already been put out into the market and been successful. 315 00:33:21,160 --> 00:33:25,870 So, for instance, I narratives, there are quite a few texts about that. 316 00:33:25,870 --> 00:33:32,290 Therefore, new texts about that issue become prioritised looking at that initial dataset. 317 00:33:32,290 --> 00:33:41,110 How were you able to account for the commercialisation of narratives and therefore that bias? 318 00:33:41,110 --> 00:33:46,330 I'm not quite sure I get the question, sorry, I got the bit up until the actual question at the end. 319 00:33:46,330 --> 00:33:55,780 I mean, do you account for the fact that there's a bias in the kind of narratives that get to text stage? 320 00:33:55,780 --> 00:34:01,480 OK. As films? As novels? Yeah, yeah. 321 00:34:01,480 --> 00:34:05,590 The makers of The Matrix trilogy, for instance, 322 00:34:05,590 --> 00:34:15,130 talk really interestingly in an interview about film as a high finance art that therefore is dependent on kind of thing things having already worked, 323 00:34:15,130 --> 00:34:23,880 which is why actually so many films are adaptations of novels or short stories of sold because you kind of know your narrative is going to work and. 324 00:34:23,880 --> 00:34:30,750 I think that works that maps onto sort of popular literary publishing. 325 00:34:30,750 --> 00:34:36,000 I think there is still space in publishing for the radically new how that links 326 00:34:36,000 --> 00:34:41,280 to story listening would be linking in terms of ideas about narrative deficits. 327 00:34:41,280 --> 00:34:47,760 So, you know, where where do you you can't only say that the dominant or mainstream stories. 328 00:34:47,760 --> 00:34:52,050 And this is why we need experts whose job it is to know other stories. 329 00:34:52,050 --> 00:35:01,230 So yes, I could talk about Terminator, but I can also talk about the amazing film called Conceiving, aided by Alan Neeson is an experimental artist. 330 00:35:01,230 --> 00:35:06,060 So fantastic film about A.I., but that is not something that a non-expert would have would read. 331 00:35:06,060 --> 00:35:07,980 So. So that would be where it fits. 332 00:35:07,980 --> 00:35:16,230 Is that the scholar, the expert can bridge that gap between what makes it onto the dominant market and the stories that are also still out there. 333 00:35:16,230 --> 00:35:19,930 And that is essentially really valuable in several ways. 334 00:35:19,930 --> 00:35:26,910 One is that the dominant stories tend to be the ones that in an unexamined ways, even the decision makers think of the dominant ones. 335 00:35:26,910 --> 00:35:32,280 So again, I mean, to use the example, and I think things have moved on, but sort of two or three years ago, 336 00:35:32,280 --> 00:35:35,880 quite a lot of people were worried about the worries about humanoid robots. 337 00:35:35,880 --> 00:35:39,630 Yeah, and it was just it was a distracting conversation. 338 00:35:39,630 --> 00:35:49,500 And if in fact, there been some more considered look at stories around AI, including in particular stories in other languages, 339 00:35:49,500 --> 00:36:00,150 all of a sudden you're getting a whole different set of information about possible models of social, human being and software systems, for example. 340 00:36:00,150 --> 00:36:06,750 So it's, as you say, looking for the weird stories or the gaps in stories would be part of this process, not just the dominant ones. 341 00:36:06,750 --> 00:36:11,880 OK, I got to ask one from online, and then the next one will be here. 342 00:36:11,880 --> 00:36:13,210 This is from Jacinta Jackson. 343 00:36:13,210 --> 00:36:20,610 Why does the framework exclude the effective nature of stories we know from behavioural economics that people aren't always rational? 344 00:36:20,610 --> 00:36:29,900 The feelings evoke. My stories have sometimes been shown to be more powerful than the pure facts within the story. 345 00:36:29,900 --> 00:36:33,560 So this is another. 346 00:36:33,560 --> 00:36:45,530 Both stories have well, so Sarah could soon speak to the literature on the empathetic and the on empathy, but stories have emotional impacts. 347 00:36:45,530 --> 00:36:49,430 We're simply saying that that may happen. 348 00:36:49,430 --> 00:36:53,780 There is also this cognitive value, so we're not. Whatever the question was interested in. 349 00:36:53,780 --> 00:36:58,770 Absolutely fine, of course. But that's often the place the conversation stopper. 350 00:36:58,770 --> 00:37:05,150 You know, this story is causing outrage or this story is, you know, having this effect in this kind of emotional sense. 351 00:37:05,150 --> 00:37:11,660 What we're interested in is the quiet voice underneath it that saying not just the passion, 352 00:37:11,660 --> 00:37:16,190 but what is it about the worldview that's underlying that passion? So what is the framing? 353 00:37:16,190 --> 00:37:23,480 But, but yeah, and also really interesting stories cognitively are not always actually very good affectively. 354 00:37:23,480 --> 00:37:29,330 So I think as a scholar, you have to make that distinction. There's the amazing short story from the mid-20th century called Deadline, 355 00:37:29,330 --> 00:37:37,040 which ended up with his the author the house arrest because anticipated the Manhattan project before it had become public. 356 00:37:37,040 --> 00:37:43,700 And it's an awful story in many, many ways, but really interesting that from an interesting from a cognitive point of view, 357 00:37:43,700 --> 00:37:50,420 so so does that point to make this all say, I was laughing about empathy because I wrote a kind of polemic against empathy, 358 00:37:50,420 --> 00:37:54,380 which then got revised, moderated and turned into the first chapter, 359 00:37:54,380 --> 00:38:01,130 which is that so often the the argument for the value of stories is that it it helps us empathy, empathise and identify. 360 00:38:01,130 --> 00:38:04,070 And then we will become better people that we get that we behave better in the world. 361 00:38:04,070 --> 00:38:12,650 There's no evidence that that's the case, either from psychology or for all, or I'm not persuaded by the rhetorical cases for this. 362 00:38:12,650 --> 00:38:19,700 So there was a real drive for me at the beginning to go, OK, we put empathy aside, which I link with the affective. 363 00:38:19,700 --> 00:38:24,380 What other value do stories have that we can build our case on? 364 00:38:24,380 --> 00:38:34,890 So that's why the end of the affective is not considered. But we do acknowledge in the book, of course, that often the cognitive value of stories. 365 00:38:34,890 --> 00:38:41,130 Is implicated with that form, which is implicated with the affect so that they can't always be separated. 366 00:38:41,130 --> 00:38:49,440 Thank you. I should have said that questions from the audience, you might introduce yourself first before asking them, Hey, so I my name is Diana. 367 00:38:49,440 --> 00:38:52,590 I'm doing my Ph.D. at the Oxford Internet Institute. 368 00:38:52,590 --> 00:38:58,260 And that was very interesting, especially because my Ph.D. is about storytelling so very relevant. 369 00:38:58,260 --> 00:39:05,610 And despite that, I have a question that's going to seem really basic, which is what actually is a story. 370 00:39:05,610 --> 00:39:09,240 And I, you know, you use the word stories a lot, obviously. 371 00:39:09,240 --> 00:39:17,760 But what makes you use that instead of the word fiction? How do we kind of, you know, what is a story in your definition of the impact of stories? 372 00:39:17,760 --> 00:39:21,510 Is it, you know, the stories that we tell each other about our days? 373 00:39:21,510 --> 00:39:29,670 Or is it published fiction? What is the what's the kind of impact and what's the kind of story that you hope will have an impact? 374 00:39:29,670 --> 00:39:33,850 Claire, from the very early on in the book, insisted that we have a glossary, 375 00:39:33,850 --> 00:39:39,330 which was entirely an unknown concept to me, and I kind of left Claire in the dark getting on with it. 376 00:39:39,330 --> 00:39:41,290 And I was so grateful. 377 00:39:41,290 --> 00:39:45,970 But when we got to the end that Claire had insisted, we have a glossary because one of the things we did is precisely go through, 378 00:39:45,970 --> 00:39:50,770 define those terms and then literally go through the manuscript and check. We were using things consistently, 379 00:39:50,770 --> 00:39:58,270 not least because we discovered when you work across sectors or across disciplines that the same word can be very different things in very different, 380 00:39:58,270 --> 00:40:03,700 all those different words for the same thing. So the glossary is how we're defining things. 381 00:40:03,700 --> 00:40:13,210 Not a kind of definitive definition. So in in the glossary, the definition story is as Claire introduced it, which is a very capacious definition. 382 00:40:13,210 --> 00:40:21,070 And now I can't remember because I haven't memorised it, but it's a causal series of events that has actors in it with agency. 383 00:40:21,070 --> 00:40:28,960 And the reason we wanted to keep it that broad was because we wanted to incorporate a scale from the institutional 384 00:40:28,960 --> 00:40:37,300 narrative that somebody or corporation might print in their public relations material through to a film. 385 00:40:37,300 --> 00:40:41,840 And this has been one of my frustrations as a literature scholar is that the school, 386 00:40:41,840 --> 00:40:49,000 the skills and the tools of literary studies are so often confined to what we consider a proper object to be. 387 00:40:49,000 --> 00:40:54,200 And I think that's a really a waste of the skills that we have so to put. 388 00:40:54,200 --> 00:41:01,310 Fiction, as you might call it, on the same continuum as a public narrative was a really important move. 389 00:41:01,310 --> 00:41:10,700 We don't use fiction in the book. We purposely avoided using fact and fiction for reasons we may get a question about. 390 00:41:10,700 --> 00:41:17,360 So stories and textual and non textual stories was our lexicon differentiating, right? 391 00:41:17,360 --> 00:41:25,730 I'm going to stop question from the floor and then ask one from so lady towards the back there. 392 00:41:25,730 --> 00:41:30,530 And while the microphone goes there, I'd like to ask a question from Trish Greenhouse. 393 00:41:30,530 --> 00:41:37,850 I'm concerned that the framework it seems to depict narratives as out there ready to be collected, heard, imbibed, 394 00:41:37,850 --> 00:41:46,190 etc. But surely a narrative scholarship in recent years encouraged us to move on from narratives as nouns and narrative as a verb, 395 00:41:46,190 --> 00:41:51,110 i.e. Pike Place greater focus on the process of storytelling, its contents, 396 00:41:51,110 --> 00:42:03,680 the audience and tell a listener dialogue and storytelling, as in that moment, is your framework to static. 397 00:42:03,680 --> 00:42:17,150 So I think the the because part of part of the drive was was a practitioner role, 398 00:42:17,150 --> 00:42:23,180 which was to say not, you know, not what could be created and in the wonderful, perfect settings. 399 00:42:23,180 --> 00:42:29,120 But if you've got a problem, know like aspects of climate change or if you've got a pandemic happening, 400 00:42:29,120 --> 00:42:36,890 what is already out there that might actually give you rapidly or relatively rapidly some new insights into the framing, 401 00:42:36,890 --> 00:42:43,160 the models, etc. So there was a sense of urgency that meant that some of the I think some 402 00:42:43,160 --> 00:42:47,360 of our own framing was about existing stories and also that there's a waste. 403 00:42:47,360 --> 00:42:56,400 If you don't look at what's already out there, you know you got millennia of human storytelling that you're not that you're not looking at. 404 00:42:56,400 --> 00:43:02,090 So that was. Having said that, the in some of the areas, 405 00:43:02,090 --> 00:43:09,110 we're also beginning to think about story listening in the context of public dialogue, deliberative democracy, 406 00:43:09,110 --> 00:43:12,980 which is some of the interesting areas where thinking about how rigorous evidence 407 00:43:12,980 --> 00:43:17,390 gets in the public decision making is some really interesting thinking there. 408 00:43:17,390 --> 00:43:20,510 And in that space, you're quite often both. 409 00:43:20,510 --> 00:43:25,190 Well, in a perfect world, you'd have your story listening exercise on everything that existed until the moment that you started. 410 00:43:25,190 --> 00:43:31,070 And then you'd also be looking at the ways in which people were creating stories as they were engaging between the evidence, 411 00:43:31,070 --> 00:43:37,370 including stories on science and the public policy matter at hand. 412 00:43:37,370 --> 00:43:42,770 Thank you. I've just been told off. I keep my pen, so I apologised to the audience online. 413 00:43:42,770 --> 00:43:46,330 The question with Thank you. I'd like to see some. 414 00:43:46,330 --> 00:43:53,090 So I'm proud of the university's policy engagement team and my job is to help humanities researchers engage with policymakers. 415 00:43:53,090 --> 00:44:00,620 So I have a question, I suppose, about definitions of how you see story being relating to qualitative evidence and whether you think that story 416 00:44:00,620 --> 00:44:07,250 listening as a concept can feed into or shape discussions about the use of qualitative evidence in policymaking. 417 00:44:07,250 --> 00:44:13,850 And also, if I may, a question about practise and whether you think that is an issue of time scales and if 418 00:44:13,850 --> 00:44:19,280 you're asking policymakers to imbibe stories as part of this sort of policymaking process, 419 00:44:19,280 --> 00:44:24,020 whether it might be quite difficult to condense stories into a sort of bullet points or and 420 00:44:24,020 --> 00:44:30,420 whether there might be some resistance to to sitting with those stories or hearing them. 421 00:44:30,420 --> 00:44:34,890 And take the second one first. I'm not sure how close the mike was to your mouth, 422 00:44:34,890 --> 00:44:43,050 so people online that was the second part of the question was about individual story imbibing by policymakers. 423 00:44:43,050 --> 00:44:51,180 That's exactly what we're not arguing for. So Claire's side, where she was talking about ecosystems and structures, 424 00:44:51,180 --> 00:45:00,120 this is about recognising that you have experts who can produce synthesised evidence that can inform decision making. 425 00:45:00,120 --> 00:45:04,760 It's not about and this links to the empathy thing a little bit, you know, 426 00:45:04,760 --> 00:45:08,770 getting the prime minister to read Jane Austen before he goes into a committee meeting. 427 00:45:08,770 --> 00:45:14,310 Like, that's just not what we're claiming or advocating for and what we are advocating for 428 00:45:14,310 --> 00:45:19,680 individual narrative literacy that does this not the same as advocating for individual story, 429 00:45:19,680 --> 00:45:24,510 imbibing of specific stories. So that would take the the second point first. 430 00:45:24,510 --> 00:45:34,930 And in answering that, I've forgotten what the first question was. Oh, it's a really good question, 431 00:45:34,930 --> 00:45:40,120 and it's one that I touched on when I said that we're really interested to hear humanities 432 00:45:40,120 --> 00:45:45,400 scholars and social scientists from different disciplines think about what we have, 433 00:45:45,400 --> 00:45:50,110 what we're calling narrative evidence links to that kind of evidence. And Alex, he's here with us today. 434 00:45:50,110 --> 00:45:58,210 We spoke about as I asked that question of us as well. And I don't think we have an answer so much as. 435 00:45:58,210 --> 00:46:03,070 It's something that we it's something that links to the bigger question of rigour 436 00:46:03,070 --> 00:46:07,480 and what guarantees rigour about the kinds of evidence that we're presenting. 437 00:46:07,480 --> 00:46:15,850 And so the claims that we'd be making for the rigour of narrative evidence may or may not not contain claims for the rigour of positive evidence. 438 00:46:15,850 --> 00:46:20,830 More generally, if you got something and you know, I think quality of evidence is such a broad category, 439 00:46:20,830 --> 00:46:28,610 I'm not really sure what more to say about that because there's qualitative evidence coming out of the sciences in many ways as well. 440 00:46:28,610 --> 00:46:33,010 So, yeah, I think I did get distracted. 441 00:46:33,010 --> 00:46:37,390 There are thinking which character in Jane Austen, the prime minister would most identify with. 442 00:46:37,390 --> 00:46:48,250 He was given the book, We Could We a question in the Frontier, and in the meantime, I'm going to go again to Jacinta Jackson. 443 00:46:48,250 --> 00:46:51,190 This is not favouritism. Her question has been vetted. 444 00:46:51,190 --> 00:47:00,250 How does this story listening approach stroke framework deal with the problem of whose stories get told and who stand? 445 00:47:00,250 --> 00:47:03,730 This is very similar to the question, I think that was asked. 446 00:47:03,730 --> 00:47:16,640 So the the answer is it should be a deliberate attempt to listen out for the ones that are not frequently told, 447 00:47:16,640 --> 00:47:22,230 and that would be part of the skill of running a specific story listening exercise. 448 00:47:22,230 --> 00:47:27,040 And I mean, in the sense, it's part of the value. That's yeah. 449 00:47:27,040 --> 00:47:32,430 Yeah. Thank you. The question from the. Hello, my name's Matilda. 450 00:47:32,430 --> 00:47:39,210 I'm an undergrad who does pay so I don't absorb any particular religion that trip to the topic at hand. 451 00:47:39,210 --> 00:47:49,500 I wanted to ask if you'd had the opportunity to apply your concept to reflexively so sort of to the domain of public reasoning of collecting evidence, 452 00:47:49,500 --> 00:47:52,860 what might be the narrative deficits of your approach? 453 00:47:52,860 --> 00:47:57,300 And you were saying you were expecting that you'd have to convince people of sort of your approach. 454 00:47:57,300 --> 00:48:07,590 But that's actually gone very quickly. What might the particular elements of your approach be that has made it so narratively seductive? 455 00:48:07,590 --> 00:48:15,580 I would say it's not actively seductive. It's it's rigorous. Do you have a thought? 456 00:48:15,580 --> 00:48:23,490 I think if I understood the coming correctly, I think it's partly that there's a real need and hunger. 457 00:48:23,490 --> 00:48:35,400 So it's so clear that there is knowledge that we need new forms of rigorous evidence in addition to the ones we've got. 458 00:48:35,400 --> 00:48:39,900 I mean, I would come to climate change as an example. I mean, you know, 459 00:48:39,900 --> 00:48:48,330 having been involved in climate modelling and all the effort that goes into the physical and natural sciences around aspects of climate change, 460 00:48:48,330 --> 00:48:56,340 you know, it's superb. But I think the sense that that the next sort of degree of exactitude of certain 461 00:48:56,340 --> 00:49:01,710 types of climate model matters less than having some really better rigorous 462 00:49:01,710 --> 00:49:06,750 ways of thinking about the kind of social and cultural connexions and 463 00:49:06,750 --> 00:49:11,040 interconnections between the physical and the social and cultural know the great. 464 00:49:11,040 --> 00:49:15,630 The need is around that kind of hybridisation, if you like. 465 00:49:15,630 --> 00:49:20,310 So I think the book is partly tapping into that sense of urgency. 466 00:49:20,310 --> 00:49:26,310 And if you lie alongside that of the because of discussion about fake news and 467 00:49:26,310 --> 00:49:32,280 and concerns about debates around things like the vaccine hesitancy and so on, 468 00:49:32,280 --> 00:49:41,460 the sense that there are really powerful stories, if you like that are operating in ways that people who believe themselves in quotes to be rational. 469 00:49:41,460 --> 00:49:48,310 You know that there's a kind of mismatch between the way we think about other people's stories and what we think. 470 00:49:48,310 --> 00:49:52,680 So we try not to use we in the book, we use it when it's literally just us. 471 00:49:52,680 --> 00:49:58,500 Yeah. So the sense of urgency around being able to face up to how stories operating 472 00:49:58,500 --> 00:50:01,740 and to think critically and reflect to be about that rather than just saying, 473 00:50:01,740 --> 00:50:05,910 I hate your story, you know, your values are not mine and I'm not going to listen to them. 474 00:50:05,910 --> 00:50:13,680 We're the self-referential because we do talk briefly and in in the book about and I'm particularly interested in this about 475 00:50:13,680 --> 00:50:21,090 textual stories that themselves imagine and model different forms of governance and evidence that informs decision making. 476 00:50:21,090 --> 00:50:24,690 So you get into a real, recursive sort of loop there, but something like a book. 477 00:50:24,690 --> 00:50:30,540 We're both hugely fond of the three body problem by decision day and is a fascinating narrative 478 00:50:30,540 --> 00:50:37,980 model of the limits of scientific evidence to make decisions in the face of uncertainty. 479 00:50:37,980 --> 00:50:47,700 So we talk about that book a little bit. And I mean, as a kind of this is this is a book about a society facing repeated catastrophes 480 00:50:47,700 --> 00:50:52,080 and having to work out what it can predict about them and how to survive. 481 00:50:52,080 --> 00:50:56,160 And those kind of different models that are trying out in a game within the story. 482 00:50:56,160 --> 00:51:07,350 So, so I'm a little academic project. That's me, probably, which would be a kind of to gather those kinds of narratives together and to look at how, 483 00:51:07,350 --> 00:51:13,840 in my case, particularly fiction, imagines different forms of governance and evidence. 484 00:51:13,840 --> 00:51:21,630 Come here, if you are going to do one from the Web and forgive me, I'm against mangle the pronunciation of lame. 485 00:51:21,630 --> 00:51:29,980 Sharona Tarasov, who asks ASDs, which I think is science and technology studies, and most specifically feminist tests, 486 00:51:29,980 --> 00:51:38,020 highlight the relational nature of stories i.e. how they then pre-existed come forth in the act of telling and how they change, 487 00:51:38,020 --> 00:51:44,590 according to who is telling. But also listening i.e. a problem is taught differently to a friend or adopted to a researcher. 488 00:51:44,590 --> 00:51:54,860 What is the role of the listener in your framework? Classic and thoughtful, so I'll take it. 489 00:51:54,860 --> 00:52:04,970 So we don't use the word listener, so story listening is the institutional act of gathering narrative evidence which 490 00:52:04,970 --> 00:52:11,030 could be commissioned by a single person or could be a you requested by a committee. 491 00:52:11,030 --> 00:52:19,160 And we talk about the story and Biber, which would be the individual who's engaging with a story and. 492 00:52:19,160 --> 00:52:23,180 Listener would confuse in our lexicon those two categories. 493 00:52:23,180 --> 00:52:30,020 So if the question is about the relation ality of the imbibe to a story, then that absolutely matters. 494 00:52:30,020 --> 00:52:34,670 For instance, when one is thinking about collective identities, 495 00:52:34,670 --> 00:52:41,360 the the subjective relationship of the Bible to the story matters less in story listening 496 00:52:41,360 --> 00:52:46,970 because what you're trying to do is is gather a synthesis of evidence from a range of stories. 497 00:52:46,970 --> 00:52:51,080 So it's not about the individual's specific relationship to it. 498 00:52:51,080 --> 00:52:55,610 The reason why feminist is hugely relevant is that it's historically made a very 499 00:52:55,610 --> 00:53:00,500 strong case for needing to value and understand different forms of knowledge. 500 00:53:00,500 --> 00:53:07,660 So a kind of history of epistemology and story. This thing would fit in an academic sense with with that work. 501 00:53:07,660 --> 00:53:13,640 And this is also why we took the various stages throughout. The book about indigenous knowledge is, for instance, 502 00:53:13,640 --> 00:53:22,280 and needing to recognise those and in addition to the kinds of knowledge and evidence that we value out of science. 503 00:53:22,280 --> 00:53:28,730 There are other forms of rigorous knowledge and evidence that have hitherto perhaps been sidelined and need, 504 00:53:28,730 --> 00:53:34,490 and we really need actually, and this isn't a kind of ethical case. 505 00:53:34,490 --> 00:53:45,740 It's it's a practical case that we are faced in the 21st century, as we all know with many urgent, complex wicked problems as the terminology is, 506 00:53:45,740 --> 00:53:53,180 and we need just as much and as many different types of evidence to help us make decisions in the face of those. 507 00:53:53,180 --> 00:54:06,920 Quentin Tarantino. I think it also brings out the point which hasn't come up here that is often below the surface, which is scientists anxiety. 508 00:54:06,920 --> 00:54:15,020 Some scientists sorry anxiety about broadening types of evidence in some of the situations that I was showing there. 509 00:54:15,020 --> 00:54:23,270 So the fear that I say by including it was the mention of indigenous knowledge that 510 00:54:23,270 --> 00:54:28,760 are some really interesting reflections and working in New Zealand and Canada, 511 00:54:28,760 --> 00:54:31,370 for example. 512 00:54:31,370 --> 00:54:42,020 Sometimes, I think wrongly, physical sciences and natural sciences lack the confidence in their own, not owning their own sort of science knowledge, 513 00:54:42,020 --> 00:54:48,440 but in the position that they have in some senses fought for and only achieved in the last few decades 514 00:54:48,440 --> 00:54:55,700 to be in the room with decision makers or to be listened to in an authoritative public setting. 515 00:54:55,700 --> 00:55:02,270 And sometimes I think there's an underlying concern that if you broaden your kind of openness to other forms of knowledge, 516 00:55:02,270 --> 00:55:09,980 that will make it possible for you to be on the cards. So the IPCC and with its climate change modelling, 517 00:55:09,980 --> 00:55:15,890 has we looked at one report specifically something like two hundred and seventy authors of whom a couple, 518 00:55:15,890 --> 00:55:22,280 a few of social scientists, but there weren't any humanities scholars and certainly from some discussions with people involved. 519 00:55:22,280 --> 00:55:29,210 It seems that that's partly because of a fear that by loosening the framework and inviting in other forms of knowledge, 520 00:55:29,210 --> 00:55:38,210 it would reduce the attributed authority of the science in that case in climate change. 521 00:55:38,210 --> 00:55:42,950 And that would be so devastating and so frightening that therefore these other forms of knowledge are excluded. 522 00:55:42,950 --> 00:55:47,240 And we're trying to say here is, you know, if it's done right, you get both. 523 00:55:47,240 --> 00:55:53,870 And indeed, to not include wider forms of evidence means that the scientific evidence may in the end, 524 00:55:53,870 --> 00:55:57,710 also be listened to less because it is incomplete. 525 00:55:57,710 --> 00:56:04,040 I've seen this very much in the biodiversity world where indigenous knowledge has a lot to offer, and it did strike me as you were talking, 526 00:56:04,040 --> 00:56:12,290 that this might be a way to bring into the in a way that everyone can find easier to to assimilate. 527 00:56:12,290 --> 00:56:20,030 Question that Miriam Mendez, I am a research facilitator in the Catholic School of Government. 528 00:56:20,030 --> 00:56:29,840 My question is related to what you once said before. If you are peaceful and you use story listening as a methodology in your research, you would. 529 00:56:29,840 --> 00:56:35,570 I suppose you would have to a lot your repertoire of sources. 530 00:56:35,570 --> 00:56:39,200 So is not only literature reviews and all these sorts of stuff. 531 00:56:39,200 --> 00:56:45,080 You have to use all the things. And as you said, there are challenges on that. 532 00:56:45,080 --> 00:56:52,460 But there are also many beauties in the sense of creating more of an environment for 533 00:56:52,460 --> 00:56:59,000 transdisciplinary and real transdisciplinary at the level of methodology you have. 534 00:56:59,000 --> 00:57:06,580 How do you think about it? I'll go, yes. 535 00:57:06,580 --> 00:57:14,540 So it's a it's a question about the need for, and I love that real transdisciplinary to you into this clarity. 536 00:57:14,540 --> 00:57:15,250 There's, I think, 537 00:57:15,250 --> 00:57:23,590 become a suspicion of interdisciplinarity because it's been sometimes perceived to be to be pushed by funders and it to be this kind of buzz 538 00:57:23,590 --> 00:57:32,200 word and that it's sort of not possible or not real and absolute fundamental advocate for interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary approaches. 539 00:57:32,200 --> 00:57:37,930 I have a paper coming out of that shortly which models different forms of interdisciplinarity, 540 00:57:37,930 --> 00:57:45,310 which can either be a single scholar needing to scale themselves up in different approaches. 541 00:57:45,310 --> 00:57:52,060 Or and this is where we talk in the book about more collaboration needed within the humanities and across disciplines. 542 00:57:52,060 --> 00:57:58,360 So a single scholar doesn't have to give up, but you have a range of scholars with existing skills who bring them together. 543 00:57:58,360 --> 00:58:02,470 And actually, I include in that in the paper that's coming out into sexuality, 544 00:58:02,470 --> 00:58:06,220 which very ugly word actually is a form of interdisciplinarity as a form of 545 00:58:06,220 --> 00:58:13,000 collaborating with researchers and decision makers who have their own methodologies, 546 00:58:13,000 --> 00:58:22,390 known skill sets that academia needs to respect to be developed in relation to their objects of study and the pressures on the needs of their sector. 547 00:58:22,390 --> 00:58:26,930 So, yes, absolutely. The story of this thing is implicated. 548 00:58:26,930 --> 00:58:39,070 That was what I kept using the academic indicated in the need for the kind of advocacy for more real into this clarity. 549 00:58:39,070 --> 00:58:45,080 And you think it's OK to add? Look, I'm really sorry, it's past 6:00, so we have to come to an end. 550 00:58:45,080 --> 00:58:51,890 I know there are more questions, both from the audience and from on online just before a couple of things. 551 00:58:51,890 --> 00:59:02,210 Let me point out that this time next week, we're going to be joined by the John Oliver, although many of you will know his book, 552 00:59:02,210 --> 00:59:09,080 but that to the world how Britain became the servants of tycoons, tax dodgers, kleptocrats and criminals. 553 00:59:09,080 --> 00:59:15,170 It's a really fascinating book, and it's going to be a great discussion. So please do come along. 554 00:59:15,170 --> 00:59:20,240 You mentioned several times that Roger Pielke, this is looking way ahead, but in November, 555 00:59:20,240 --> 00:59:24,770 Roger will be spending a week here and there will be a bench round with him. 556 00:59:24,770 --> 00:59:32,030 Sarah, I hope we can bring you down from Cambridge. Young, thoughtful. This plenty to do. 557 00:59:32,030 --> 00:59:35,750 We clearly missed a trick on our Typekit as well, listening to the title of the book next week, 558 00:59:35,750 --> 00:59:42,720 which sounds much more exciting than the for the people in the audience here. 559 00:59:42,720 --> 00:59:46,970 Please do join us next door for a glass of wine. 560 00:59:46,970 --> 00:59:53,480 I should also say there will be other flyers around and that gives you a 20 percent discount on the book. 561 00:59:53,480 --> 01:00:00,760 I don't know if that applies to a virtual audience as well, or how we can get that to. 562 01:00:00,760 --> 01:00:07,940 People, while there is a code online, so you can get the discount as well. 563 01:00:07,940 --> 01:00:12,830 Let me thank the audience for real and virtual for some really interesting questions. 564 01:00:12,830 --> 01:00:16,580 But most of all, it's a really complex topic you've been discussing. 565 01:00:16,580 --> 01:00:20,420 You've done it with wonderful clarity. I think this is a groundbreaking book. 566 01:00:20,420 --> 01:00:26,060 It is making us think about evidence in a totally new way. 567 01:00:26,060 --> 01:00:32,090 And as I said, it's genuine. Speaking of cross-disciplinary, a divide. 568 01:00:32,090 --> 01:00:43,533 So it it really is fascinating. Please join me in thanking clown Sarah.