Colin Blakemore - Public Engagement and Public Service

Public Engagement and Public Service

In parallel with his academic career, Colin Blakemore has championed the communication of science and engagement with the public on controversial and challenging aspects of science.

In 1976 he was the youngest ever person to give the BBC Reith Lectures for which he presented a series of six talks entitled Mechanics of the Mind.

He has subsequently presented or contributed to hundreds of radio and television broadcasts. He gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in 1982-3, and he has written and presented many other programmes about science, including a 13-part series, The Mind Machine on BBC television, a radio series about artificial intelligence, Machines with Minds, and a documentary for Channel 4 television, God and the Scientists. He writes for British and overseas newspapers, especially The Guardian, The Observer, the Daily Telegraph and The Times. He has also written or edited several popular science books, including Mechanics of the Mind, The Mind Machine. Gender and Society, Mindwaves, Images and Understanding and The Oxford Companion to the Body. Since 2004 he has been President of the Association of British Science Writers.

In 1989, when Blakemore was awarded the Royal Society's Michael Faraday Prize for his work in public communication, the citation described him as "one of Britain's most influential communicators of science”. Blakemore has won many other awards for his work in public communication and education, including the Phi Beta Kappa Award for contribution to the literature of science, the John P McGovern Science and Society Medal from Sigma Xi, the Edinburgh Medal from the City of Edinburgh and the Science Educator Award from the Society for Neuroscience.

Blakemore has worked for many medical charities and not-for-profit organizations, including SANE, the International Brain Injury Association, Headway, Sense (The National Deafblind & Rubella Association), the Louise T Blouin Foundation, Sense about Science and the Pilgrim Trust. He is President of the Motor Neurone Disease Association and Brain Tumour UK, and Vice President of the Progressive Supranuclear Palsy Association.

He helped the Dana Foundation of New York to establish the European Dana Alliance for the Brain, an alliance of leading European neuroscientists who are committed to raising awareness of the importance of brain research. A large donation from the Dana Foundation to the Science Museum completed the funding for the Dana Centre on Queen's Gate in London, which has become a focus for public engagement with science.

He has been a Fellow of the World Economic Forum, and he is Honorary President of the World Cultural Council, a member of the World Federation of Scientists and a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association. He is one of the patrons of the Oxford University Scientific Society and an Honorary Member of the Cambridge Union Society. He is a member of the Advisory Council of the Campaign for Science and Engineering.

Blakemore has served in an advisory role for several UK government departments and also for agencies, foundations and government departments overseas. He was a member of the Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones (the Stewart Committee) in 1999-2000. He chairs the General Advisory Committee on Science at the Food Standards Agency and is a member of the Wilton Park Advisory Council (Foreign and Commonwealth Office). He has a long-standing interest in policy on drugs of abuse, and is a Commissioner of the UK Drug Policy Commission and an adviser to the Beckley Foundation. He is also a member of the Longevity Science Advisory Panel of Legal & General. He sits on the European Advisory Board of Princeton University Press.