Talk: "What experts? Whose advice? The 'Delphi oracle' and 'Moses tablets' in the management of the Covid19 health emergency in Italy"

When: 5 May 2023, 12:00 - 14:00

Where: Conference room (A222), Department of Political Science, University of Vienna, Universitätsstr. 7/2nd floor, 1010 Vienna

In this talk Silvia Camporesi will present the results of the Italian branch of the international research project ESCaPE (Evaluating Scientific Advice in a Pandemic Emergency) which she led in 2020-21 and which aimed at understanding how expert advice was sought, produced, and utilized in the management of the Covid-19 emergency in Italy. This case study provides an overview and encompassing representation of the mobilization of experts, and of selected types of evidence, in Italy in 2020. Their findings suggest that expert politics can lead to the confirmation of knowledge hierarchies that privilege hard sciences, and corroborate prior literature indicating that economic and social expertise has not been well integrated into public health expert advice, constituting a major challenge for policymaking during an emergency. You can find further information here as well as the full article published in nature here.

Silvia Camporesi is a bioethicist with a longstanding interest in technologies and health, and an interdisciplinary background in medical biotechnology, ethics, and social sciences. She is affiliated with the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at University of California, San Francisco, and with the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London. Silvia is author of more than 50 peer reviewed articles in a variety of medical ethics, bioethics, and scientific journals, and two books. She is Associate Editor of the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry and Trustee of the Institute of Medical Ethics (UK), as well as member of the World Anti Doping Agency Ethics Advisory Expert Group. Silvia is currently working on her third book on the construction of categories in sport (Fandango, 2023). She also writes for a variety of media outlets, including AEON, the International Public Policy Observatory, and the Conversation. You can find out more about her research here.