Liverpool LASER talks encourage artists, researchers and the public to question the work carried out by artists and scientists in transdisciplinary art-science spaces by recognizing shared aims, examining processes and constructing a shared language. In this paper, the authors reflect upon their first year as LASER hosts and propose that Liverpool LASER events—supported by an accessible network of leading artists and scientists—act as community “studio-laboratories,” spaces where speakers and publics engage in two-way conversations, present and gain confidence in their ideas, gather feedback on new concepts and outputs, and facilitate knowledge transfer.

Faces of Merseyside is a gallery/online exhibition of digitally processed facial averages produced from Merseyside image collections by Face Lab, a research group at Liverpool School of Art & Design. The project seeks to foreground the question of cognitive bias in relation to facial images that claim to represent particular communities, in the context of a resurgence of interest in physiognomic judgments and discrimination. By revisiting Francis Galton's nineteenth-century composite portraiture, as informed by current craniofacial research, Faces of Merseyside explores the claims advanced in relation to the representation of human diversity and how they both inform and challenge social stereotyping.