David Turnbull is a researcher in Science and Technology Studies. His research focuses on the ways knowledge and space are co-produced, through the lenses of knowledge practices and traditions in Western science; narratives of prehistory and the development of polities; and theories of complexity and the commons.
Turnbull was a key figure in establishing Deakin University's Science and Technology Studies programme in Geelong, Australia in the 1980s and 1990s. He took up a role at Deakin University after completing his MA at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Much like his colleagues David Wade Chambers and Helen Verran -- whom Turnbull collaborated with on various projects -- Turnbull was committed to the development of STS teaching materials, many of which are included in the STS Across Borders Archive.
David Turnbull has written an essay on his experience arriving at Deakin University specifcially for the STS Across Borders Archive, titled 'Finding My Way Through Messy Contingencies: autoethnographic reflections on working in Social Studies of Science at Deakin University'. In this essay, Turnbull reflects on his arrival at Deakin University (when Max Charlesworth hired Turnbull partly on the basis of a letter Turnbull had published in the Melbourne-based newspaper The Age, on Karl Popper) as well as the broader history of Deakin STS.
While at Deakin University, Tunrbull collaborated with David Wade Chambers to produce academic papers on approaches to teaching STS, such as 'Science Worlds: An Integrated Approach to Social Studies of Science Teaching' and 'Seeing a World in a Grain of Sand: Science Teaching in a Multicultural Context'. Examples of Turnbull's teaching materials -- such as his 'Maps are Territories' digital publication, which includes a contribution from Helen Verran -- can be found in the 'Deakin University STS Teaching Materials' bundle.
The establishment of a Deakin University STS research and teaching tradition in the 1980s and 1990s is documented in Helen Verran's essay 'Doing Difference Differently: Deakin STS in the late 1980s' and Warwick Anderson's essay 'A Deakinite Knowledge Regime for STS?', both of which were produced specifically for the STS Across Borders Archive.
This paper describes the content, approach and rationale of the courses in social studies of science taught at Deakin University in Geelong, Victoria from the 1980s-1990s.Read more
This paper was published by David Wade Chambers and describes a comparison between two STS curricula: the Imagining Nature Project at Deakin University in Geelong, Victoria and the Native Eyes Project at the Institute of American Indian Art at Sante Fe, New Mexico.Read more