Science, Technology, and Society Seminar: STS Circle at Harvard

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Date and Time

September 8, 2025
12:00PM - 01:45PM EDT

Location

CGIS South, Room 354

1730 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States
A light lunch is provided for those who register by 1:00 the Thursday before the event.

Dreamscapes of British Biotechnology circa 1980

Speaker

  • Alistair Sponsel, Oral Historian and Curator of Life Sciences, Science History Institute; Lecturer in History, Tufts University.

Chair

  • Sheila Jasanoff, Faculty Associate. Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies; Professor of Environmental Science and Public Policy, Committee on Degrees in Environmental Science and Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School.

Contact

Henry Austin
henryaustin@hks.harvard.edu

Abstract

This paper uses the founding of Britain’s first dedicated biotechnology company, Celltech (est. 1980), as a historical case to study the range of then-possible futures for the nascent field of genetic engineering in the UK. Established by the government’s National Enterprise Board (NEB), Cellech was meant to compete with venture capital-supported biotech startups in the USA and to ensure that Britain would not continue to forgo economic benefits from domestic discoveries like monoclonal antibodies. I draw on archival sources from research scientists, civil servants, the prime minister’s office, commercial landlords, and the company itself; they reveal a vigorous disagreement over whether the company should be located in an academic center or an industrial estate. These options, I argue, reflected distinct visions of how biotechnology could contribute to national prosperity at the moment of transition from a Labour government to Thatcherism.

Bio

Alistair Sponsel is Oral Historian and Curator of Life Sciences at the Science History Institute in Philadelphia. His research focuses on the history of modern biology and biotechnology, the earth sciences, and the Pacific. He is the author of Darwin’s Evolving Identity: Adventure, Ambition, and the Sin of Speculation(Chicago, 2018). He has been a senior research fellow in the Program on Science, Technology & Society at Harvard Kennedy School and has held teaching appointments at Harvard, Vanderbilt, and Tufts universities.

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