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- Convenors:
-
Paula Helm
(University of Amsterdam)
Aysel Sultan (Technical University of Munich)
Theresa Willem (TUM)
Selin Gerlek (University of Amsterdam)
Tanja Ahlin (University of Amsterdam)
Roanne van Voorst (University of Amsterdam)
Mone Spindler (University of Tübingen)
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- Discussants:
-
Klaus Hoeyer
(University of Copenhagen)
Huub Dijstelbloem (University of Amsterdam)
Tobias Blanke (Kings College London)
Jane Calvert (University of Edinburgh)
Jeannette Pols (University of Amsterdam)
- Format:
- Combined Format Open Panel
Short Abstract:
Engaged research requires both specific methods and increased ethical reflection on its normative dimensions. To meet these demands, a variety of methodological approaches have been developed that share some defining characteristics. These characteristics are at the center of this panel.
Long Abstract:
Engaged research requires both specific methods and increased ethical reflection on its normative dimensions. To meet these demands, a variety of methodological approaches have been developed, experimented with, systematized, and refined. These include: Empirical Ethics (Pols 2015), Future Co-Envisioning (Lanzeni/Pink 2022), Participatory Design (van Voorst/Hilhorst 2018), Embodied Research (Helm 2021), Ethics of Engineering Design (Verbeek 2006), Integrated Research (Spindler et al. 2020), Critical AI (Raley/Goodlad 2023), Participatory Action Research (Rappaport 2020), Data Ethics (Hoeyer 2023), Embedded Ethics (McLennan et al. 2020). While this list could go on, and the approaches in it are diverse, they still have some defining characteristics/motivations in common:
1. Methodological innovation by combining approaches that have so far remained entrenched behind disciplinary boundaries.
2. Integrating ethical dimensions of empirical research not as an add-on but in its design.
3. Practicing ethics as grounded within practices rather than applying fixed normative frameworks.
4. Critically engaging with the blurring of boundaries between researchers and research partners and the role of peer-researchers, particularly in sensitive settings.
5. Conducting research with the express purpose of impacting practices and structures on the ground.
These characteristics, their relevance, and the tensions that emerge while putting them into practice are at the focus of this panel. Along these lines, we welcome contributions that:
• experiment with, theorize and reflect on engaged methodologies by drawing on lived experiences.
• put forward conceptual interventions that rethink and reimagine engaged research.
Combined Format:
I. OpenSession
II. Collaborative Intervention: Through storytelling, collaborative imagination and collegial support we build a speculative tool-box for living engaged methodologies. Thereby we explore formats and structures of mutual support. Chair: Mone Spindler
III. OpenSession
IV. Round Table: Co-Envisioning Futures of Engaged Methodologies. Discussants: Klaus Hoeyer, Jeannette Pols, Huub Dijstelbloem, Tobias Blanke. Respondents: Selin Gerlek, Paula Helm, Tanja Ahlin. Chair: Roanne van Voorst.
Accepted contributions:
Session 1Theresa Willem (TUM)
Short abstract:
This contribution aims to further develop the embedded ethics and social science approach to enable future projects to effectively deploy it. It is based on the practical experience of using ethics and social science methodology in interdisciplinary AI-related healthcare consortia.
Long abstract:
Integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into critical domains such as healthcare holds immense promise. Nevertheless, significant challenges must be addressed to avoid harm, promote the well-being of individuals and societies, and ensure ethically sound and socially just technology development. Innovative approaches like Embedded Ethics, which refers to integrating ethics and social science into technology development based on interdisciplinary collaboration, are emerging to address issues of bias, transparency, misrepresentation, and more. This paper aims to further develop this approach to enable future projects to effectively deploy it. Based on the practical experience of using ethics and social science methodology in interdisciplinary AI-related healthcare consortia, this paper presents a set of methods that have proven helpful for embedding ethical and social science analysis and inquiry. They include (1) stakeholder analyses, (2) literature reviews, (3) ethnographic approaches, (4) peer-to-peer interviews, (5) focus groups, (6) interviews with affected groups and external stakeholders, (7) bias analyses, (8) workshops, and (9) interdisciplinary results dissemination. We believe that applying Embedded Ethics offers a pathway to stimulate reflexivity, proactively anticipate social and ethical concerns, and foster interdisciplinary inquiry into such concerns at every stage of technology development. This approach can help shape responsible, inclusive, and ethically aware technology innovation in healthcare and beyond.
Please note, this tool allows for 8 co-authors max - full list: Theresa Willem, Marie-Christine Fritzsche, Bettina M. Zimmermann, Anna Sierawska, Svenja Breuer, Maximilian Braun, Anja K. Ruess, Marieke Bak, Franziska B. Schönweitz, Lukas J. Meier, Amelia Fiske, Daniel Tigard, Ruth Müller, Stuart McLennan, Alena Buyx
Beatrice Bonami (Universität Tübingen)
Long abstract:
Value-centered and context-driven technologies show that innovation ecosystems (Granstrand, Holgersson, 2020) have the power to create a space where pluriversal (Escobar, 2017) worldviews can converge and co-create a sustainable future, co-developing responsive solutions with social assemblages (Deleuze, Guattari, 1987). The notion of technological development and success still seems to be retained by Europe and North America, where Southern geographies’ marginalization is supported by power structures seeking to maintain historical dominance (such as the colonial legacy). When Post-coloniality (Mignolo, 2007) is entangled with Science and Technology Studies (STS), it opens a realm to comprehend the feasibility of decolonizing digital technology and shaping a future digital landscape where Northern knowledge is situated and positioned (Haraway, 1988) and Southern populations can enjoy digital fairness. Naturally, to accomplish such an ambitious milestone, frameworks across many disciplines have emerged, covering a myriad of thematic approaches, and this proposal will offer a panoramic view of the existing theoretical models. Additionally, this paper will debate the possibility of a framework for decolonizing transformation in non-Western and Southern innovation and technology - and the tensions that emerge from (i) data collection and extrativism practices versus the consumption of digital goods, (ii) tailoring of systems and algorithms versus their meaningful application among societies, and (iii) the suppression of cultural and linguistic diversity versus shared and purposive prosperity. As a result, it is expected that by addressing the tensions, boundaries, and opportunities within technology decolonization frameworks, this panel can offer insights to pave the way toward Southern digital emancipation.
Jeanne Féaux de la Croix (University of Bern)
Long abstract:
Collaborative and engaged methods are becoming mainstream in many anglophone academic environments. They hold such promise as transformative approaches to the global challenges we face. But much of the literature and practice assumes a basic degree of freedom of speech, not experienced by the majority of people in the world. How can the ideals of collaboration and engagement work in such settings?
Amid the deserved enthusiasm for transformative research, openly discussing misjudgments is key to developing more context-sensitivity for living engaged methods. This contribution shares experiences from the ‘sticky bits’ and moments of risk in working with collaborative and arts-based ethnographic methods in post-Soviet Central Asia. I want to share some humbling lessons, as well as the opportunity for collegial support and collectively honing the collaborative toolbox.
If iterative research design principles and co-production of knowledge are the norm, what adaptations in non-‘free’ settings should become a matter of critical attention? How do you make sense of responsibilities, in the wake of townspeople collaborating in Kyrgyzstan, being quizzed by the secret police? What if local hospitality ethics in rural Kazakhstan preclude addressing less-than-respectful relations between older and younger workshop participants? When does collaboration become oppositional politics, needing to learn more from social movements than classic science epistemologies? In addressing especially points 3, 4 and 5 of the panel agenda, I could either contribute a classic paper or use a more personal style and arts-based style of story-telling.
Aysel Sultan (Technical University of Munich)
Long abstract:
Inspired by Braidotti’s work on affirmative ethics, I draw a cartography of critical drug studies – a field that explores the social, material, and affective constellations of lived experiences of people who use illicit drugs and drug policies that, in turn, shape these experiences – to argue for methodological affirmative ethics. In Braidotti’s reading, affirmative ethics is a collective practice of “co-constructing affirmative modes of relation and values” (2019: 475). Inspired by Deleuzian turn that challenges the traditional qualitative methodologies, affirmative ethics stresses the presence as a process of ‘becoming’ – ethical, accountable, and engaged. Here the field of critical drug studies presents a unique example in which lines between research, advocacy, and personal practice are enmeshed in making up the evidence, interventions, and policy discourse of the field and its radical epistemologies. These methodological shifts include reframing ‘addiction’ as habit and as (re)made in practice (Fraser, Moore and Keane, 2014), understanding drug use through body mapping and artistic engagement (Dennis, 2019a; 2019b), ‘recovery’ as an assemblage rather than individual journey (Duff, 2016; Sultan, 2022b), de-centralizing human agency, and conceptualizing drug use contexts as heterogeneous and dynamic (Duff, 2007; Sultan and Duff, 2021), foregrounding pleasure in drug use, shifting perceptions by ‘coming out’ as researchers who use drugs (Ross et al., 2020), and advocating for anti-prohibitionist policies. Through all these, the field exemplifies engaged methodological collaboration (Calvert, 2023) of becoming different, reshaping practices and entrenched understandings of drug use, and prompting the question of “what are we capable of becoming?”.