Volume 25 • Issue 7 • 2026

Why do scientists differ in the public roles they consider appropriate on climate change? Existing research documents variation in engagement behaviours and barriers. Less is known about how scientists combine judgements about who should act publicly and which forms of engagement are legitimate. Using an international survey of scientists (N = 9,220), we construct a four-category typology that crosses the scope of the public mandate with the repertoire of legitimate action. Political self-placement and activist-network proximity are associated mainly with protest-inclusive configurations, whereas climate-research proximity is associated mainly with whether the mandate extends beyond climate-related specialists. Role-boundary orientations are only partly aligned with retrospective self-reported behaviour. The findings distinguish normative judgements about public roles from engagement intensity and show that the scope and repertoire dimensions have different correlates.

Although itinerant science popularisation initiatives extend opportunities for public engagement beyond established science communication infrastructure, limited empirical evidence exists on how programme implementation is shaped under peri-urban conditions. This Practice Insight examines Puerta Politécnica al Cosmos, an itinerant astronomy programme in north-eastern Mexico, as an instrumental case for identifying recurring implementation conditions from which analytically transferable implementation insights were derived. We employed a convergent mixed-methods design integrating visitor surveys (N = 404), collaborator surveys (N = 30) and semi-structured student interviews (N = 40) through analytical triangulation. We identified four interdependent implementation conditions demonstrating how educational experiences, organisational coordination, participant engagement and territorial context interacted throughout programme delivery. These conditions revealed implementation trade-offs associated with accessibility, logistics, visitor management and technical infrastructure. The study demonstrates how analytical triangulation can generate implementation knowledge that provides the basis for analytically transferable implementation insights to inform the planning, adaptation, delivery and evaluation of itinerant science popularisation initiatives in peri-urban and other territorially underserved communities.

This essay offers a practitioner reflection on an art–science installation titled Perpetual Motion, presented at Art Central Hong Kong in 2021. The work places visitors between two records of path-taking: a handmade carpet derived from the firing patterns of neuronal grid cells and a suspended mobile of pre-1500 AD mtDNA haplogroup maps tracing deep-time human migrations. Developed under conditions of enforced confinement and shaped by the practical constraints of access, copyright, and institutional ownership of scientific imagery, the installation explores what becomes possible when an artist works directly inside high-profile scientific visual languages rather than illustrating them from the outside. Drawing on observations and visitor questions recorded during facilitated sessions, the essay examines the conceptual operation of juxtaposing these two scales of path-taking and the practical realities of presenting such work in a high-traffic public setting. It contributes to the growing body of practitioner accounts that document the productive frictions and modest possibilities of aesthetic engagement with complex science.

Journalists make science meaningful to lay audiences through a mix of narrative rhetoric techniques and science communication strategies. Siri Carpenter argues in her book The Best Science Stories and How They Work, as well as through her selection of eleven works of science journalism with annotations and interviews with fellow writers, that person-centred storytelling, which is relevant and relatable to society, helps audiences examine complex science topics purposefully. The collection comes at a time when science communication weighs approaches that build trust in the people, process and outcomes of science.