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CP472


Spaces, species and serendipity, or, keeping responsible research and innovation weird 
Convenors:
Jane Calvert (University of Edinburgh)
Koichi Mikami (Keio University)
Cookie Egret (Colorado State University)
Sophie Stone (The University of Edinburgh)
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Chair:
Stephen Hughes (University College London)
Format:
Closed Panel
Location:
HG-10A20
Sessions:
Wednesday 17 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Amsterdam

Short Abstract:

How can we stop responsible research and innovation becoming narrow and formulaic? In other words, how can we keep it weird? Can thinking in terms of spaces, (multi)species and serendipity provide opportunities for more expansive, reflexive and transformative approaches to RRI?

Long Abstract:

Responsible research and innovation—a concept that remains underdefined, and therefore fluid— can be a useful heading for embedded STS work. But it can become a placeholder for more familiar and tractable activities such as public outreach or research integrity, or operationalized as a set of steps or a checklist for researchers to follow. This tends to close down reflective capacity rather than open it up. To counteract these tendencies, this panel explores ways of keeping RRI weird by thinking of it in terms of spaces, species and serendipity. We draw on examples from our ongoing work on synthetic biology.

Talks will explore attempts to create spaces for RRI by carving out opportunities for collaboration at scientific conferences and meetings, often at the peripheries and fringes of these events. We also discuss interdisciplinary workshops we have designed that aim to create spaces for multi-species response-ability, on the grounds that attending to other-than-human species is a way to cultivate livelier understandings of RRI. Being responsive to other species requires that we are open to the unexpected, and further contributions to the session trace the serendipitous paths that have led us back to the unlikely organisms of the Burgess Shale, back to the Asilomar meeting and its legacies and forward to current policy discussions. In all these contexts, we explore the ways in which thinking in terms of spaces, species and serendipity might provide opportunities for more expansive, reflexive and transformative approaches to RRI.

Accepted papers:

Session 1 Wednesday 17 July, 2024, -