Welcome To Public Space.

Simon Pardoe specialises in communicating academic research findings to policy, professional and public audiences.  He personally oversees each PublicSpace project.

Unusually, he has combined the physical sciences and the social sciences both in his own education and in his career in research, education, public consultation and research dissemination.

His PhD at Lancaster University analysed issues in Environmental Impact Assessment; combining Applied Linguistics (using genre and critical discourse analyses to analyse issues and tensions in professional scientific writing) with Science and Technology Studies (using Actor Network Theory to analyse issues in the production of scientific claims and information).

He was previously a Teaching Fellow, Research Associate and Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Linguistics at Lancaster University.  He also taught academic and professional writing on the university’s Academic Support Programme, working with masters and PhD students in Management, Law, International Relations, Environmental Science and Sociology.  His interest was particularly in enabling mature students to combine their professional experience with academic theory and research when writing dissertations and theses.

He briefly taught on the Open University’s MSc in Science and Society, before taking up a further post at Lancaster University to research issues of citizenship within the public debates around the UK GM crop trials.

He worked with the Centre for the Study of Environmental Change (CSEC) on the Ministry of Defence Project ISOLUS (their first major public consultation) on the future management of decommissioned nuclear submarines.  He co-facilitated, and then analysed and reported the public discussion groups.  He subsequently worked with CSEC to co-facilitate the public discussion groups and citizen panels for the UK Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) 2005 public consultation.

As a Director of PublicSpace, he led the development, writing and design of the 2005 consultation document for the UK Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM).  He then analysed and reported the written responses.  He has managed and collaborated in all the PublicSpace projects since then.

He originally trained to teach Maths and Communication to adults in Further Education (after the inspiring experience of teaching English to business people in Paris).  As a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Business Studies in Inner London, he taught and co-ordinated a range of first level, second chance and access courses for 9 years.  He worked with the Greater London Council on developing the second chance scheme in Business Studies.  Prior to its abolition, he was the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) Advisory Lecturer on the development of learning materials in Further Education, working with editors, publishers and teams of lecturers across London.

His own education relevant to research communication also includes a degree in Geography from Aberystwyth with Statistics and Maths, A-level Physical Science, masters courses in Applied Linguistics and Science and Technology Studies at Lancaster University, doctoral research training in the Social Sciences and an MA in Applied Linguistics.  He first trained in making documentary video in 2007 with Documentary Film Group (DFG) in London, and has trained with Signal Films in further aspects of video since then.

He is a member (and past executive member) of the British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL).