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Toss Gascoigne is science communication practitioner, editor and author. He is a visiting fellow at the |Australian National Centre for Public Awareness of Science at the [| Australian National University], in Canberra, Australia.

His first book, Antarctica: Discovery and Exploration (co-authored with Peter Collett) was written when he was a humanities teacher in Hobart, and published by the Curriculum Development Centre, Canberra in 1987

In 1989 he co-edited Dreamtime, a collection of short stories for the Children’s Book Council of Australia. This book was followed by two similar collections, Into the Future (1991) and Bittersweet (1992).

Gascoigne has published on the history of modern science communication, on whether the field could be considered a discipline, science advocacy, and the establishment of ‘Science meets Parliament’. He co-edited Communicating Science in Social Contexts (2008), and has contributed chapters to books including Theory and Best Practice in Science Communication Training edited by Todd Newman.

Gascoigne is chief editor of [https://press.anu.edu.au/publications/communicating-science Communicating Science. A Global Perspective], published by [| ANU Press]in September 2020. The book involves 108 authors describing how science communication evolved in 39 countries, and is the first serious attempt to document its development. In the three weeks following its release, the book was downloaded over 10,000 times, setting a new record for ANU Press. His career in science communication began in 1991, when he joined the CSIRO Division of Environmental Mechanics at Black Mountain in Canberra, as scientific editor.

In 1995 he was appointed executive director of the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies (FASTS), now re-named Science and Technology Australia (STA). Gascoigne developed a new event called Science meets Parliament, an Australian interpretation of the American Congressional Visits Day. The event brought 150 scientists into Canberra for individual meetings with Federal Members of Parliament where they explained what they were doing and the significance of their work. This annual event continues and Science meets Parliament events has been picked up across Europe and in Canada.

From 2004-2008, Gascoigne was the inaugural executive director of the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences.Gascoigne has run training workshops for scientists and science communicators in Australia, the Pacific and a dozen other countries, since 1992. These workshops have focussed on science communication, how to reach different audiences and explain complex concepts. The first workshop in Rockhampton in 1992 trained 12 scientists in media skills, and developed and expanded into other areas including presentation skills, planning science communication and writing for the reader.

He has been a member of the Scientific Committee of the Network for the Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST Network) since 1994, and was elected President in 2008.

In 1993-94, he had helped create the Australian Science Communicators (ASC). He is a former president and life member of ASC.