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Short abstract:

This paper examines a case of research on organoids to highlight some of the temporal, social and material practices required to successfully enact accepted forms of public participation. The relevance of these practices remains invisible to local institutional appraisals of public participation.

Long abstract:

Although increasing appreciation for practices of public participation in research has emerged in both academic fields like STS and governance reforms around research policy, funding and institutional management, these contexts can carry different conceptions of what public participation actually is and what it requires.

This paper presents findings from qualitative research amongst three biomedical research groups working in an institutional context where public participation is heavily promoted as a key ingredient to ‘relevant’ and ‘impactful’ research. It focuses on the work of one group engaged in research through so-called organoids and reconstructs how this research has come to be regarded as a highly successful example of public participation in research. This analysis highlights the importance of particular temporal, social and material practices and factors in successfully enacting publics and participation, which typically remain invisible in the general perspectives on public participation presented by local institutional managers and researchers themselves.

The paper argues that the prevalent understanding of public participation within this particular biomedical institutional context is notably realist. It entails a view of participation as a kind of positivist science, where a particular set of accepted methods can be used to uncover ‘truths’ about pre-existing publics (which should then inform research). This view keeps multiple forms of enactment work relevant to the successful practice of public participation hidden from sight, which in turn has important consequences for what kinds of participatory practices are recognized, what research is valued and rewarded, and even what topics researchers are willing to take up.