In May 2005, the first workshop of the "How Well Do 'Facts' Travel?" project was held at LSE.
The aim of that meeting was to encourage the invited delegates to talk about the project question - focussing especially on the question of what it might mean for a fact to travel well. At that time, the project was still in its infancy, and the workshop was accordingly concerned with fundamental questions intended to better orient the project for the ensuing years: How was the title question to be understood in light of the chosen subject matters? How might a fact cross borders from one field of inquiry to another? What might it mean for a fact to travel from a specialist to a populist audience? How might a fact be physically instantiated, and would it fare better or worse for this embodiment?
It quickly became clear that different people had very different understandings of what was meant by talk of travelling facts, what types of phenomena could be "facts," and how successful travelling ought to be measured. One delegate summed up the situation as follows: "You have five words, and each word is deeply problematic." But while everyone agreed the question was challenging, no one thought it wasn't useful, and the richness of the discussion was promising.
From that first workshop came many of the conceptual parameters which would come to outline the various research strands that together form the "How Well Do 'Facts' Travel?" project. Many of the invited guests have remained in close contact with the projects, forming what are sometimes informally termed "the Facts friends."
After the success of the first workshop, it was agreed that, over the course of the project, each of the five research officers would organise a workshop of their own, addressing an aspect of their research project.