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- Convenors:
-
Julie Sascia Mewes
(Technische Universität Berlin)
Britta Acksel (Wuppertal Institute for Environment, Climate, and Energy)
Claudia Göbel (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz)
Aurora A. Sauter (Goethe University)
Dana Mahr (Institut für Technikfolgenabschätzung und Systemanalyse)
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- Format:
- Roundtable
Short Abstract
The roundtable discussion addresses current debates around methodic reflexivity and inclusivity in STS. It provides a space for reflection on how 'participation' is discussed & enacted in various participatory method(ic)s to facilitate knowledge exchange on participatory STS & its growing plurality.
Description
During the 90-minute session, the contributors give up to five short talks on the main arguments and/or calls to action of a discussion paper currently in progress concerning the current state and future of participatory STS in Germany. These talks build upon a one-day workshop held during the stsing-conference in March 2026. During this workshop, the group jointly analysed research data from various projects across Germany, focusing on the performativity of methods in practice through 'methodography', a genre of writing that encourages us to 'understand our method of ethnography (and other forms of social inquiry) ethnographically' (Greiffenhagen et al., 2011; Lippert & Mewes, 2021).
With this, ‘participatory methodography’ sets the ground for a more nuanced analysis and discussion on how, when, in what form does participation occur, how is it facilitated and/or prevented, and for whom?
First, the group interactively maps the various approaches to participatory STS research commonly used across Europe and beyond, reflecting on uncommon and marginalised approaches. The following discussion is organised in small groups over two rounds, exploring how, when and with what real-life effects participants' research methods enact and textually represent 'participation' as a shared analytical framework.
Questions include:
What is 'participatory' about our participatory research?
How can 'participation' be traced throughout the research project?
How do participatory methods navigate tensions between inclusion and expertise?
Building on the World Café approach, the discussion concludes with a collective discussion on the current state and future of participatory STS. All participants are invited to compile these reflections for a second joint discussion paper, to facilitate more targeted knowledge exchange, networking, and collaboration, taking into account the efforts of other networks and associations working on such matters in Europe and beyond (e.g. VW-Foundation, 2025; Downey & Zuiderent-Jerak, 2021; Mewes et al., 2025).
Accepted contributions
Session 1Short abstract
When participation requires facilitation techniques (to bring people together, generate interest, translate, hybridize, formalize, and disseminate newly acquired knowledge) as well as reflective observation to avoid the “in-group” effect, precisely in order to continue hybridizing diverse knowledge.
Long abstract
Three years ago, the University of Toulouse adopted a policy of “Science with and for Society” aimed at promoting exchanges and comparisons of knowledge between researchers from different scientific disciplines (focusing on disciplinary issues as well as multi- and interdisciplinarity) and a wide variety of non-academic actors (companies, associations, local authorities, media, educational and cultural institutions, etc.). Various funded initiatives have been set up (calls for collaborative research projects, science shops, laboratories with local authorities to influence public policy, etc.). The research analyzed all these forms of collaboration and showed that developing participatory and collaborative dynamics between actors with different profiles in order to enable the sharing and comparison of knowledge (knowledge from all scientific disciplines, but also the experiential knowledge of beneficiaries, stakeholders, and decision-makers from civil society) requires the development of facilitation skills and techniques (in particular the ability to bring together, engage, translate, hybridize, formalize, and disseminate new knowledge) as well as observation skills. The latter focus in particular on avoiding the “in-group” effect in order to always enable the hybridization of knowledge from diverse profiles and areas of expertise. This paper aims to describe how these skills pave the way for new engineering and therefore new professions in a world of higher education and research seeking to develop a policy of impact (academic and societal) in conjunction with a policy of partnerships.
Short abstract
This paper presents a three-tier PPIE framework — Involvement, Engagement, and Consultation — for Phase-0 medical device research, reconceptualising participation as a mosaic of knowledge exchange rather than power transfer.
Long abstract
Phase-0 clinical studies occupy a distinctive and underexplored position in the translational research landscape. Operating at the interface of engineering feasibility, experimental medicine, and regulatory science, they involve value-laden decisions about acceptable risk and the quality of early evidence rarely subjected to public scrutiny. Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) has become central to health research governance, yet its application to medical device development and early-phase trials remains limited and theoretically underdeveloped.
This paper presents the PPIE strategy developed for MicroTex, a programme engineering medical devices to advance Phase-0 trials for infection and inflammation therapies. Drawing on Tritter's (2009) critique of power-transfer models and departing from hierarchical frameworks such as Arnstein's Ladder, we propose a three-tier participatory architecture in which distinct epistemic relationships between researchers and publics are recognised and operationalised simultaneously. Rather than treating participation as a scalar variable of power, we conceptualise it as a mosaic of knowledge exchange, where deliberation, transparency, and breadth of societal voice serve distinct functions in responsible innovation.
We argue that public participation here is not merely procedural but constitutive: it shapes what counts as meaningful evidence, acceptable risk, and legitimate translational progression in a domain where regulatory frameworks are still evolving. The strategy integrates a social justice lens to address structural inequities in representation.
This paper contributes to STS debates on biomedical governance, the epistemics of patient knowledge, and participatory structures that meaningfully inform — rather than merely legitimate — early-stage innovation.