Pippa Goldschmidt [GB]

Can we create new ways of thinking about space exploration that go beyond the exploitative character of capitalist models? What role does interdisciplinary research play in achieving this and why does science need fiction? At Coded Matter(s) Terra Fiction writer and former astronomer Pippa Goldschmidt will recite out of her short story collection The Need for Better Regulation of Outer Space and reflect on these questions. She’ll also give insights in international and domestic space law as she briefly worked in space policy and regulation within the UK Government. She’s also part of a new network based at the University of Edinburgh looking at the ‘social dimensions of outer space’. This network aims to carry out interdisciplinary activities that critically examine the space race and related topics.

Pippa Goldschmidt is a writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. She is the author of the novel The Falling Sky and the short story collection The Need for Better Regulation of Outer Space, and she’s also co-editor (with Tania Hershman) of I Am Because You Are, an anthology of short stories and essays celebrating the hundredth anniversary of general relativity (all published by Freight Books before it went bust). Her work has been broadcast on BBC Radio and published in a variety of places including the Scottish Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement and the New York Times, as well as anthologies such as Where Rockets Burn Through: Contemporary Science Fiction Poetry from the UK (Penned in the Margins) and Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014 (Houghton Mifflin).
In 2015 she was a writer-in-residence at the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg Institute for Advanced Study in Delmenhorst, Germany. She has taught workshops on writing in a range of places including libraries, prisons and universities. Pippa is currently a writer-in-residence in the Science, Technology and Innovation Studies unit (STIS) at the University of Edinburgh.