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Paper short abstract

Scenario-based pandemic exercises stage how different epistemic cultures are integrated in science advice. Drawing on ethnographic research of such an exercise, this paper shows how knowledge is brokered across multiple boundaries, reproducing but sometimes unsettling hierarchies of expertise.

Paper long abstract

Calls for interdisciplinary science advice intensified after COVID-19, with policymakers urging closer collaboration between biomedical sciences and the social sciences and humanities (SSH). Yet integrating diverse epistemic cultures in crisis governance remains difficult. This paper examines how practices of preparedness organise the inclusion and integration of different forms of knowledge within advisory infrastructures in the Netherlands.

Drawing on boundary practices and epistemic justice, we analyse a multi-session pandemic scenario-based exercise conducted in the Netherlands in 2025. The exercise brought together biomedical, behavioural, and SSH researchers to collaboratively produce advice for a fictional Ebola-like outbreak. Treating the simulation not as a rehearsal for a future crisis but as an anticipatory infrastructure, we examine how it stages the work of integrating different types of expertise. The analysis draws on participant observation and fieldnotes from discussions across three phases of the simulated outbreak.

We show that the exercises function as a site of epistemic brokerage, where different forms of knowledge are translated, prioritised, and made ‘actionable’ for policymakers. Integration occurs across multiple boundaries: between disciplines, between parallel advisory bodies, and between experts and imagined policymakers. These brokerage practices enable collaboration but also reproduce hierarchies of legitimacy, with biomedical framings often setting boundaries for problem definitions while social and experiential concerns enter as contextual or secondary considerations. At the same time, moments of reflexive discussion around values create openings for more diverse forms of knowledge to shape advice.