'Research sharing' using social media: online conferencing and the experience of #BSHSGlobalHist.

In February 2020, the British Society for the History of Science hosted its first entirely digital conference via Twitter, with the dual goals of improving outreach and engagement with international historians of science, and exploring methods of reducing the carbon footprint of academic activities. In this article we discuss how we planned and organized this conference, and provide a summary of our experience of the conference itself. We also describe in greater detail the motivations behind its organization, and explore the good and bad dimensions of this relatively new kind of conferencing.

Innovation in a crisis: rethinking conferences and scholarship in a pandemic and climate emergency.

It is a cliché of self-help advice that there are no problems, only opportunities. The rationale and actions of the BSHS in creating its Global Digital History of Science Festival may be a rare genuine confirmation of this mantra. The global COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 meant that the society's usual annual conference - like everyone else's - had to be cancelled.

Portable sequencing, genomic data, and scale in global emerging infectious disease surveillance.

Emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) occur when pathogens unpredictably spread into new contexts. EID surveillance systems seek to rapidly identify EID outbreaks to contain spread and improve public health outcomes. Sequencing data has historically not been integrated into real-time responses, but portable DNA sequencing technology has prompted optimism among epidemiologists.