The journal Science Communication recently published our article “Strategic Place-Making and Public Scientific Outreach in the American Chemical Society’s National Historic Chemical Landmarks Program.”
More than any other piece we’ve written as a group, I think this one had us working together as an interconnected unit the most. It involved traveling to (and finding!) multiple, obscure landmarks (see below for just a few of my favorite landmark-hunting photographs that we took during this sometimes extremely frustrating process); analyzing compelling archival documents housed at the Science History Institute (the project was first initiated with a library travel grant I received from the Institute several summers ago); and parceling through publicly available online materials from the American Chemical Society. It also had us theorizing about the mechanisms by which strategic placemaking can help or hinder efforts to make science available to non-experts.
To say that seeing this study through to publication has been a learning experience would be an understatement, and I am so grateful to our team–in this case led by Dr. Benjamin Mann–for making it happen.
Find out more about the National Historic Chemical Landmark Program and its individual landmarks here.