Science interrupted: A conversation with Timothy G. McLellan

In Science Interrupted: Rethinking Research Practice with Bureaucracy, Agroforestry, and Ethnography (Cornell University Press, 2024), anthropologist Timothy G. McLellan investigates and breaks down audit cultures and the practice of dealing with bureaucracy within scientific research. The book takes place within a transnational agrofor- estry research institute in southwest China, the Institute for Farms and Forests (IFF), but rather than choosing to centre his analysis on China, McLellan uses his field site and his experience of being embedded within the institute for more than two years to make broader obser- vations about interruptions and problematics within today's scientific practice in academia and beyond. McLellan then provides many ideas and aspirations for how science might be reformed to adjust to and work better with vulnerability and interruption, showing how these challenges could be used to benefit research for environmental change.