Siouxsie Wiles MC/Entertainer Profile

Pink Haired Science Communicator

One of the country’s most recognised scientists, Dr. Siouxsie Wiles and her team make bacteria glow in the dark to find out what is making us sick with the aim of finding new medicines. Outside the lab, Siouxsie regularly appears on radio and TV to communicate science and deliver hard hitting facts. In 2019 she was made a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to microbiology and science communication. Prior to this, she has been honoured as a Blake Leader by the Sir Peter Blake Trust as well as winning both the Royal Society Te Apārangi Callaghan Medal and the Prime Minister’s Science Communication Prize. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Siouxsie became one of the primary faces, communicators, and educators in NZ. This led to Siouxsie being named the supreme winner of the Stuff-Westpac Women of Influence Awards in 2020 and the 2021 Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year. During this time, she was followed by a documentary-maker and the film Ms. Information will soon be playing at the New Zealand International Film Festival.

Mission

Despite a successful career in London, in 2009 Siouxsie followed her partner to New Zealand where she soon began to add science communicator to her list of skills. Little did she know that in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit New Zealand, she would become one of the main scientific faces of the COVID-19 crisis. Her award-winning collaboration with cartoonist Toby Morris has saved lives all around the world and led to her being named as one of the BBC’s 100 women of 2020. Ready to step up and help as an infectious disease expert, Siouxsie was unprepared for the harassment and abuse that followed. Within months, she had become a target for those who wished to use the pandemic to divide, manipulate, and exploit people. Its an issue she wants us to talk more about; many of her abusers aren’t anonymous “keyboard warriors” but people from all walks of life using their real names and work emails to harass her. Outside of COVID-19, Siouxsie is a passionate scientist whose main goal is to find new antibiotics to treat resistant ‘superbugs’. Without antibiotics, these superbugs make surgery much less safe and treatments like chemotherapy for cancer become life-threateningly risky. She’s written a book about the issue – Antibiotic resistance: the end of modern medicine? – and she and her team are doing what they can from right here in New Zealand to help combat this global crisis.

Keynote

Siouxsie delivers keynotes on a wide range of topics from leadership, communication, and harassment, to COVID-19, future pandemics, vaccination, antibiotic resistance, and creativity in science. Her motivation is to help people understand the importance of collective action. No matter the topic, or the situation, as individuals we can achieve amazing things when we work together.