The University of California, San Diego (UCSD), held a staged reading of RCC Director Prof. David Abramson’s play Purely Academic last week, 12–13 April.
The university’s Research Ethics Program and Earl Warren College Office of the Provost, with support from the Institute for Practical Ethics, invited all staff, students and alumni to the reading.
Purely Academic dramatises the darker side of academia, including both personal and professional clashes in academic research. It invites discussion about professional ethics and practises today.
In a similar vein, next month UCSD will host a performance of Margin of Error by San Diego playwright Will Cooper. Framed around a fictional group of physicists, the play highlights competition in science and how it is handled by those involved.
In its invite to both plays, UCSD’s Office of the Vice Chancellor—Research announced: “As a premier public university with a strong research focus, ethics are a critical part of our mission. We are excited to offer this fresh perspective which we hope and trust will generate important conversations across campus.”
Prof. Abramson has a close working relationship with staff at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, a research unit of UCSD.
Purely Academic was first performed with a cast of actors at Oxford University in January 2013. It was later presented in Brisbane as a staged reading at UQ in November 2016, and as an acted performance at the Brisbane Conference and Exhibition Centre in October 2017 as part of the eResearch Australasia conference.
