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Short abstract

Through a range of experiments in practice-based research, from sociotechnical foresight to applied science fiction, we demonstrate and analyse the value, limitations, and constraints of framing anticipation work aimed at ‘opening up’ futures landscapes within a RRI approach.

Long abstract

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) has emerged for well over a decade as an engaged, practice-based strand of STS with interventive objectives for futures and emerging technologies. Foresight and other futuring methods are key to facilitating RRI, which aims to go ‘upstream’ in the development process of emerging science and technology, to enable anticipatory action that can shape that process in ways deemed to be socially desirable and to help build capacity to cope with perceived concerns and potential risks. When, how, and who gets to be heard in deciding what may be ‘socially desirable’, which concerns are considered and which are discarded, which risks are paid attention to: these are crucial and uneasy questions underlying the choice and development of futuring approaches for RRI. In this paper, we discuss our experiments in conducting futures studies of emerging science and technology, in practice: first, as part of an established overall RRI strategy in the context of the Human Brain Project, a Future and Emerging Technology Flagship of the European Commission, between 2014 and 2020; second, through applied speculative/science fiction, an independent line of practice-based research in participatory processes for ‘opening up’ futures for RRI, pursued by one of the authors since 2016. Through a range of experiments and activities, we demonstrate and analyse the value, limitations, and constraints of framing anticipation work within a RRI approach. This is a research paper contribution to a Combined Format Panel.