Bio
Hooley McLaughlin has been teaching in the Museums Studies program since 2004, and at the Faculty of Information since 2006. In 2016, he retired as Vice President of Science Experience and Chief Science Officer at the Ontario Science Centre. Over 30 years there, he led more than 20 major exhibitions on topics ranging from psychology to materials sciences, many of which travelled to major international institutions. The exhibition, A Question of Truth, on the history of cultural bias, discrimination, and atrocities done in the name of science, was on display from 1996 to the centre’s closing in 2024.
His academic background in studies ranging from languages to developmental biology, his Ph.D. subject area, and his experience as a curator working in international venues, have given him many opportunities to speak and write. The Ends of Our Exploring: ethical and scientific journeys to remote places (Malcolm Lester Books, Toronto) was named by the Globe & Mail as one of the top 100 books of 1999. More recently, he co-edited Science Museums in Transition: Unheard Voices (Routledge, 2020), a collection of chapters of diverse authorship featuring perspectives from Arab Middle-Eastern, Israeli, Latinx, North American Indigenous, and African-American perspectives among others. He combines his research and teaching with his work as a visual artist and language student – currently trying to master dialectical Lebanese. His most pressing project is a book on the impossibility of scientific communication between cultures.