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Short abstract:

This paper analyses case studies of three areas in which European projects have examined, designed, implemented, and strengthened co-creation activities across robotics innovation, engineering education, and science with and for society.

Long abstract:

In the last decade, the European Union has given increasing attention to the involvement of society in the production of knowledge, the design of profitable technologies, and the definition of solutions to societal challenges of different magnitudes. The keyword that guides these activities is “co-creation”. This paper analyses case studies of three areas in which European projects have examined, designed, implemented, and strengthened co-creation activities. These include (1) open innovation projects on robotics, (2) educational actions promoted by one alliance of the Erasmus+ funded European Universities Initiative (EUI), and a comparative explorative project on co-creation funded by the Horizon 2020 Science with and for Society Programme (SwafS). These projects are examined by looking at their overarching rationalities, goals, technologies of participation, and the obstacles they encountered. The robotics projects mobilised co-creation intending to accelerate acceptance of these technologies and create new markets. The EUI alliance implemented co-creation to form holistic European engineers and engineering education. The SwafS project advocated for a situated understanding of co-creation, emphasising that co-creation processes and solutions should be tailored according to socio-cultural conditions of their contexts of implementation. The paper closes with a discussion of challenges posed by these contrasting rationalities of co-creation, their incompatibilities, and the multiple obstacles to bring them together. The paper thus provides avenues for ecologising participation in European progammes.