---
title: "Popsicule"
chunk: 1/3
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popsicule"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:17:04.529121+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Popsicule (also referred to as the Popsicule) is the Science in Popular Culture and Entertainment Hub of the Australian National University. Established in 2022 by Anna-Sophie Jürgens, a Senior Lecturer in science communication, it is based within the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science.
Through interdisciplinary research, teaching, and creative public engagement initiatives, the hub focuses on the cultural meanings of science, examining how popular culture shapes public discourse, understanding, and cultural ideas about science, as well as the relationship between science and society. Its activities include courses, publications, film screenings and discussions, the development of science communication formats, and collaborations with scientists, artists, and cultural practitioners.
In 2025, Popsicule received the Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Programs that Enhance Learning at ANU.

== History ==
Popsicule was established in 2022 at the Australian National University by Anna-Sophie Jürgens. It developed from Jürgens’s research on the cultural meanings of science, humour, and popular entertainment, as well as from her teaching in science communication and popular culture. 
From its inception, Popsicule combined research, teaching, and public engagement activities, functioning as a platform for science engagement and research collaboration, a teaching laboratory, and a space for student publications. Its work has involved interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaboration between researchers, students, and creative practitioners, as well as fostering dialogue on science and science communication across disciplines and sectors. The hub’s activities have expanded to include public programmes, the development and testing of non-traditional research-based formats for science communication, and media engagement.

== Aims and approach ==
Popsicule’s work is grounded in the study of science as a cultural force with its own cultural life, with a focus on how meanings of science are produced, negotiated, and contested within popular culture and public media. Drawing on science communication, the history of science, cultural studies, popular entertainment studies, and related fields, the hub examines how scientific ideas, images and imaginaries of science and scientists, and visions of scientific pasts and futures circulate beyond laboratories and formal institutions. A central premise of Popsicule’s approach is that public understandings of science are shaped not only by information, but also by narrative, aesthetic, and emotional strategies. Through the analysis of film, television, comics, fiction, performance, visual art, and digital media, Popsicule investigates how science is conceptualised, performed, and culturally configured, and how these cultural expressions influence trust, authority, curiosity, and engagement in science–society relations.
The hub places particular emphasis on communicative and narrative strategies that move beyond dominant tropes, such as the “mad scientist” or techno-apocalyptic discourses. It foregrounds humour, wonder, hope, and creative play as analytical lenses for understanding how science is imagined, debated, and experienced in public culture. Within this framework, humour is treated as an analytical and diagnostic tool that reveals social expectations, anxieties, and values surrounding science.
Popsicule also examines how scientists are featured in, and participate in, popular culture. It explores how scientists engage with, respond to, and shape cultural narratives through collaboration with artists, filmmakers, writers, and designers, and how these exchanges contribute to the formation of scientific identities and the expansion of science’s role in public life.
Environmental knowledge and human relationships with non-human species form a further area of focus. Popsicule explores how popular culture communicates climate change, ecological urgency, and environmental responsibility, and how aesthetic experience can challenge human exceptionalism and foster alternative imaginaries of coexistence.
Methodologically, Popsicule operates at the intersection of humanities and science communication research, combining critical analysis with practice-based collaboration and experimentation. Popular culture is treated both as an object of study and as a site for research-led science communication, positioning science as embedded within broader cultural systems of meaning, performance, and imagination.

== Activities and initiatives ==
Popsicule’s activities span research, teaching, and public engagement, with a focus on developing and testing creative formats for science communication in collaboration with academic and cultural partners. A central initiative is Science. Art. Film., a programme of film screenings and discussions that brings together scientists, artists, and audiences to explore science themes through cinema and visual culture. The series, presented in partnership with the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, combines curated screenings with expert commentary and public dialogue, examining how film reflects, shapes, and envisions scientific knowledge and imagination.
Popsicule’s collaboration with the online journal w/k – Between Science and Art constitutes a further strand of its activities, focusing on the intersection of science, science communication, and creative practice. This work includes the curation and publication of two article series on “Street Art, Science and Engagement” and “Visual Science Storytelling, Sequential Art and Illustrated Science Communication”, to which both artists and scientists contribute.
Teaching activities form a core component of Popsicule’s work. Two university courses are associated with the hub: Science in Fiction and Film and Science, Humour and Pop Culture. It also supports student-led publications and creative projects that engage with science through cultural media.
In addition to its academic and teaching programmes, Popsicule engages with wider publics through public seminars and workshops, festival contributions, podcasts, and media appearances. Members of the hub contribute to public discussions on science in popular culture through articles, interviews, and broadcast media, including contributions to outlets such as The Conversation, Fantasy/Animation, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Popsicule’s activities are supported by collaborations with national and international partners across academia, the arts, and the cultural sector, and include participation in public festivals, exhibitions, and community events such as the Uncharted Territory innovation festival, Comic-Con Canberra, and ACT Science Week, including workshops and public programmes.