Space Science in Context Conference

Space Science in Context (17–18 October, 2024) is returning for its third year! SSiC is a FREE, cross-disciplinary conference on outer space and society – intended to bring together those across natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, and community work to tackle the big questions facing the community.

This year SSiC’s theme is Justice in Action.

Space Science in Context

Previous Space Science in Context conferences happened in 2020 and 2023, attracting over 800 people between then and highlighting 20+ speakers who talked about their social contexts of outer space. The content is still up on the SSiC website – so if you’d like to have a look at what was covered before, get in touch with the organisers through the SSiC website.

In this year’s programme, there are live sessions on the 17–18th October 2024. All speaker talks are pre-recorded and uploaded to the SSiC website one week before the event. This is because it’s so important for people to get a chance to think about the talks beyond the panel itself – it helps the audience and speakers reflect all of the conference content, bring thoughtful and rich questions, and dive deeply into cross-cutting issues during the live discussions. Some of the topics the panellists are covering this year include insights into making documentaries about aero/space workers; leading an organisation supporting Black researchers in space science; developing and running community groups advocating for Indigenous Sky rights; producing science fiction…and much more!

The three panels this year are:

  • Space Futures which investigates who imagines the future of outer space, how, and in what ways?
  • Where Are They Now?, which revisits topics and speakers from the SSiC 2020 and SSiC 2023 conferences; and
  • Communities of Practice where we look at organisations reshaping the practices of space science.

The conference also includes a film screening, and two online social spaces for networking and sharing ideas. Registering for the (free) conference gets you access to all of these events!

One thing that is really important to the organisers, at Space Science in Context is a commitment to accessibility for the event. This means all of the pre-recorded speaker videos will have transcripts and closed captioning. There is English-language CART for the live event; you can see which sessions have CART on the Programme Schedule. The live event will be hosted on Zoom, but not be recorded.

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07 October 2024

SPAN Whitepaper: Academic View on the Future of Space Policy and Funding

The Whitepaper, now available from SPAN, covers and I hope reflects academic views on funding gap implications, membership of ESA, need for a strong national and bilateral programmes along with comments on links to industry and some general points.

12 September 2024

SPAN joins Australia House for Roundtable

SPAN were invited to a roundtable discussion hosted by Deputy High Commissioner Elizabeth Bowes PSM at Australia House. The event welcomed Professor Christopher Lawrence and Lieutenant General Larry James, from Monash University, as well as representatives from the UK Space Agency and Australia House. The discussion focused on how Australia’s National Indigenous Space Academy (NISA) […]

06 September 2024

Highlights from ELGRA Symposium 2024

The SPAN team were delighted to be partnering at the 28th Biennial ELGRA 2024 Conference, which took taking place from the 3-6 September  in Liverpool, UK.