There is no doubt that political science has always been characterised by a normative afflatus. Verba was deeply concerned with understanding how democracy works in practice and how it can survive over the course of time. Lasswell constantly argued that political science should focus on problem-solving in order to improve the quality of citizens’ lives. David Easton clearly indicated that political science ought to focus on major problems that must be immediately addressed. For Sartori, political science should be conducted for society’s sake and should produce useful and applicable knowledge; for Ostrom and Putnam, it should help citizens; and for Katznelson, it should focus on how to pursue “a more decent politics and society under dangerous and difficult conditions”. For many reasons internal and external to the discipline, these normative roots and goals have been forgotten in recent decades. It is time to restore the normative afflatus of political science by pushing it to become more normative-based, more solution-seeking, more engaged and more critical.

The Brexit referendum was an unprecedented event in the context of British politics, but it was also a defining moment for the discipline of political science. Never before had political scientists in the UK faced such demand for public engagement against the backdrop of a highly polarised electoral campaign. This article assesses how scholars met this challenge by analysing online contributions to established academic websites in the 6 months prior to the vote. It highlights that high-profile political campaigns pose a distinct dilemma for political scientists: on the one hand, the reach of their contributions is far greater when they take a positional stance on an issue, yet the value of political science rests on its credibility, which can come under threat if the public perceives the discipline, and academics more generally, to represent partisan viewpoints.

This article describes a novel program of language science engagement, called CogSciDIY: Language Science. This program combines features from citizen science and participatory-action research in an innovative way to promote science understanding. Language science is rarely covered in these domains, so the program provides a unique opportunity for nonlinguists to learn more about the field. Using an interactive online platform, members of the general public assisted a research team in identifying a research question, designing an experiment to test that question, and interpreting the results of the experiment. The program provided guided support for the participants to learn about both language science content and the scientific method more generally. User outcomes in the form of participation analytics and an internal evaluation survey suggest that this program has promise for helping the general public to better understand the scientific dimensions of language study.

How might donor influence shape the ways community foundations engage with public constituents? Using donor-advised funds to proxy for donor influence, I combined content analysis and structural topic modeling to analyze the themes of 4,055 public engagement messages sent by community foundations on Twitter. The structural topic model results revealed that donor influence significantly varied the themes of public engagement tweets. Strong donor influence was significantly correlated with greater use of policy advocacy and public education messages but negatively correlated with public mobilization and dialogic messages. This study contributes to a growing line of research on donor control and provides important insights into the power dynamics among the triad of community constituents, donors, and foundations.

Public communication about antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is widely acknowledged as a cornerstone of global, national, and regional strategies to tackle this urgent health threat. However, much like AMR itself, efforts to communicate about it are hindered by complex and intersecting challenges. This scoping review synthesises insights from 88 scholarly manuscripts published between 2015 and 2024 to explore critical issues in AMR communication and identify potential options to address them. We distil nine overarching themes that underpin effective public communication and engagement, with particular significance for engaging with disadvantaged and vulnerable communities. These themes encompass (1) social science theoretical frameworks, (2) varied sociocultural contexts, (3) public engagement and dialogue, (4) linguistic considerations, (5) messaging strategies, (6) media use and its impacts, (7) large-scale public campaigns, (8) creative communication approaches, and (9) evaluation. We discuss each theme and outline related recommendations, collectively advocating a re-imagining of AMR communication as a civic, cultural, and reflexive practice that is attuned to the complexities of diverse contexts and cultures, and designed to enhance societal relevance and impact.

Examining the rich history of subnational electoral reforms in Canada, we identify three distinct waves of reform, as well as three paradoxical trends pertaining to both the nature of the proposed alternative system and the process by which reform was attempted. First, while reduced constraints and lower stakes at the municipal level should encourage more frequent electoral experimentation, changes to provincial legislation have left many local governments without the authority to alter their own electoral rules. Second, despite the fact that public engagement has become a key aspect of modern reform efforts, governments have compensated by introducing new obstacles. Third, governments often employ different processes depending on the nature of the proposed change, subjecting reforms aiming to (re)introduce plurality to fewer hurdles.

In the coming decades, Antarctica will face a range of challenges linked to transnational issues such as climate change, plastics pollution and geopolitical tension. Such challenges make it increasingly important for the Antarctic sector to ensure that there is broad public support for the ongoing political and environmental stewardship of the southern polar region. Initiatives such as the 2032–2033 International Polar Year offer a unique opportunity to enhance public knowledge of and investment in Antarctic research, but little is currently known about how well-suited the Antarctic sector is to the work of public engagement. In this paper, we present the results of an exploratory survey (n = 76) conducted in 2022–2023 to examine the Antarctic sector’s capacity to engage with the public. We find that, while public engagement work is certainly happening in the Antarctic sector, it is often ad hoc and under-resourced, and the skillset associated with engagement work is commonly undervalued. In order to capitalize on the opportunities presented by the next International Polar Year, we recommend that the organizations within the Antarctic sector collaborate on a joint public engagement strategy.

The articles compiled here offer examples of how the impacts of anthropogenic climate change in coastal settings are monitored and measured, how the broader public can be involved in these efforts, and how planning for mitigation can come about. The case studies are drawn from the southeastern United States and the British Isles, and they indicate the great potential that cooperating communities of practice can offer for addressing climate-change impacts on cultural heritage.

The Being Human Festival, celebrating its tenth anniversary in 2024, is the UK’s national humanities research festival, held every November to engage local communities with creative and participatory events that are free to attend. Over its first decade, Being Human has helped transform UK public engagement practices in the humanities, strengthened community ties, and inspired academic and public participants alike. Looking back on 10 years of Being Human, the director of the festival takes readers behind-the-scenes to see who makes it happen, how, and why. Looking forward, the festival aims to further transform public engagement infrastructure, support vernacular knowledge, and expand globally, advocating for the humanities’ indispensability in a democratic society.

The idea that democracy is in crisis is nothing new; ancient Greek commentators like Plato and Thucydides argued that political instability was baked into democracy as a regime type. Can examples drawn from classical Athens make a useful contribution to discussions of the failings of contemporary democracy? This article considers a range of interventions from the past decade in the United States and the United Kingdom, carried out at different scales and through different methods. It considers the strengths of working with material from the distant past – its non-partisan nature offering a safe space to discuss political conflict without engaging in it – and also the weaknesses, such as the limited franchise of ancient democracies like classical Athens, and the need to consider specific historical issues in their own context. It also considers the unfamiliarity of ancient history and the way in which knowledge of the classical past can itself be perceived as class-bound and exclusionary.

Research on advanced biopreservation — technologies that include, for example, partial freezing, supercooling, and vitrification with nanoparticle infusion and laser rewarming — is proceeding at a rapid pace, potentially affecting many areas of medicine and the life sciences, food, agriculture, and environmental conservation. Given the breadth and depth of its medical, scientific, and corresponding social impacts, advanced biopreservation is poised to emerge as a disruptive technology with real benefits, but also ethical challenges and risks. Early engagement with potentially affected groups can help navigate possible societal barriers to adoption of this new technology and help ensure that emerging capabilities align with the needs, desires, and expectations of a broad range of interested parties.

Does war deepen gender inequalities in politicians’ behavior or help erase them? We draw from the terror management theory developed in psychology to argue that the onset of a violent conflict is likely to push politicians to conform more strongly with traditional gender stereotypes because it helps individuals cope with existential fears. To test our argument, we use data on Ukrainian politicians’ engagement on social media (136,455 Facebook posts by 469 politicians) in the three months before and after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, and interrupted time series analysis, to assess the effect of conflict on politicians’ behavior. We find that conflict onset deepens gender-stereotypical behavior among politicians in their public engagement. We also show that, consistent with our argument, gender biases among the public are magnified during war.

‘Social and Cultural Innovation’ is a syntagma that is receiving increased usage among researchers since it was the title chosen by the European Strategy Forum Research Infrastructures for the working group that deals with research infrastructures primarily connected with Social Sciences and the Humanities. Innovation refers to the creation of new products and services by bringing a new idea to the market. Economic growth turns on infrastructures, which provide access to services and knowledge, e.g. by overcoming the digital divide. The current migrant and refugee crisis has made it clear with extraordinary effectiveness that a most urgent objective is to work out policies of social and cultural innovation to the advantage of new citizens – policies that will make them feel welcome in full dignity.

Invasive species can have disastrous effects on the ecosystems they invade, requiring costly, labour-intensive mitigation. Public awareness campaigns are often used as a tool to reduce these species’ impacts. While heralded as useful and cost-effective, little evidence suggests that these campaigns contribute to meaningful biological outcomes. Furthermore, awareness campaigns are relatively understudied despite their usage as a common approach to mitigating invasive species. We conducted a literature review to assess publications that evaluated the efficacy of public awareness campaigns for managing invasive species. Out of 4382 papers initially extracted for analysis, we determined that 24 of them included studies conducted on awareness campaigns for invasive species. Four public awareness campaigns were deemed a ‘success’, and the other campaigns’ success was indeterminable due to study design. Our study revealed that inconsistencies in defined end points, unclear procedures and variability of campaigns contribute to there being insufficient evidence to determine the efficacy of public awareness campaigns. To evaluate the true efficacy of public awareness campaigns, we recommend that organizations conducting such campaigns implement rigorous and standardized assessments (e.g., Before–After Control–Impact designs or Bayesian analyses) that include measures of not just changes in the knowledge and behaviour of target audiences, but also relevant biological outcomes.