Research and Intellectual Interests
George Gaskell’s research interests fall under the rubric of societal psychology, an approach he developed with the late Hilde Himmelweit, which suggests that a neglected focus in social psychology is the study of social phenomena and cultural forces that both shape, and in turn are shaped by, people's outlooks and actions. Past research projects include the study of energy use and conservation, the crowd in contemporary Britain, youth and unemployment, and social and cognitive aspects of survey methodology.
George Gaskell is well known for developing the toblerone model of social representations with Martin Bauer, for his edited handbook with Martin Bauer, Qualitative Researching with Text, Image and Sound: A Practical Handbook (2000), which provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to a broad range of research methods with the objective of clarifying procedures, good practice and public accountability – now translated into Portuguese, Hebrew and Chinese.
His current research, drawing on social representations theory, focuses on science, technology and society, in particular the issues of risk and trust; how values influence people’s views about technological innovation, and the governance of science and technology. Since 1996 he has coordinated the series of Eurobarometer surveys on ‘Biotechnology and the Life Sciences’ for DG Research. He was principal investigator of ‘Life Sciences in European Society’ (LSES), a European comparative study of biotechnology in the public sphere funded by FP6 of the European Commission and more recently ‘Sensitive technologies and European Public Ethics’ (STEPE).
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