Lecture
SG – Who Says So? Negotiating Expert Authority
What does it mean to be an expert and what is necessary to be regarded as such by others? Who knows, who decides who knows, and when can you claim not to know?
About Who Says So? Negotiating Expert Authority
It is often said that science is nowadays seen as 'just another opinion' – but is this really true? Together with political scientist, novelist and essayist Wytske Versteeg, we explore the question what it means to be an expert and what is necessary to be regarded as such by others. We also investigate the ways in which we negotiate about knowledge in everyday life: who knows, who decides who knows, and when can you claim not to know? Such negotiations occur much more often than you might think. This raises another question: what is it that we actually talk about when we think we talk about knowledge?
About series ‘Who Knows?’
How do you know what you know?
Who decides who knows? And how can we understand and value different claims to knowledge?
In this series we invite you to dive into these large questions.
About Wytske Versteeg
Wytske Versteeg is a novelist, essayist and political scientist. Her research has focused on the negotiation of expertise, and the discursive and dramaturgical aspects of democratic debate. In 2018, she published her dissertation "How do you know?": Everyday negotiations of expert authority. She is a fellow at the Urban Futures Studio at Utrecht University. Wytske is currently, among other things, working on a non-fiction book about the addiction to truth.