Short Abstract

This panel interrogates collaborative future-making in and as scientific practice. The combined format examines concrete tools and methods e.g. inspired by speculative design or participatory foresight, and explores wider implications for academia and the role STS could be equipped to play in this.

Description

As reflected in the conference theme, STS scholarship has long explored the "more-than-now". Opening and shaping alternative sociotechnical futures has been intertwined with democratizing knowledge production and technology development through openness, participation and public engagement. Recently, collaborative future-oriented methodologies seem to proliferate across a much wider range of academic disciplines and contexts. Practices such as speculative design, scenario techniques, foresight workshops or participatory modeling are gaining traction within basic research (e.g., modeling plausibility in climate science, fostering pandemic preparedness), teaching (e.g., imagining higher education in the era of AI), or at the science-policy-interface. While participatory research has traditionally engaged diverse publics in knowledge production or design of concrete tools or applications, these approaches differ by explicitly targeting futures.

This combined panel thus interrogates science-based practices and politics of co-designing futures, asking: What happens when futures become sites of collaborative intervention rather than expert prediction?

Contributions are invited to explore these questions from two complementary angles. In the workshop session, we examine specific tools and devices by trying out, reverse-engineering, or otherwise engaging reflexively with them. In the paper session, we address broader implications: Who is invited to these future-making spaces, what do they enable or foreclose? How are expertise or scientificity enacted and negotiated? Where do these practices become performative, how and for whom? What role can, or should STS play in these collaborations?

Panel Format:

Each contribution takes two forms:

1. Traditional paper presenting the case study with theoretical discussion and critical reflection

2. Tool demonstration where authors showcase a specific co-design method from their empirical work, preferably in an interactive, hands-on way

Abstracts should introduce the paper; include a short description of the tool you want to demonstrate and specify any practical requirements. Please also clarify whether methods were developed by the authors or encountered in their field - both are welcome as they offer different analytical perspectives.

Propose contribution