PI: Exploring Resilient Futures

In the opening plenary, we plan to discuss the future by examining several key aspects: What are the possible future scenarios? Can we hope for greater equality, or should we expect worsening inequality? Will we be able to minimize the impact of the environmental catastrophe? Will science and technology come to the rescue? To what extent can STS contribute to the critical reflection on current future scenarios? What is, and what should be, the role of STS in this context? Is our future (and our social imagination) captured, and if so, by whom? Do we need a new imagination, metaphysics, or common sense to renew our futures? Finally, to what extent can experimentalism as a mode of governance help us break out of the current predicament and its accumulated problems, which stem in part from years of neoliberal organization?

Discussion Moderator:

Krzysztof Abriszewski is an Associate Professor of Cultural Studies and Head of the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at Nicolaus Copernicus University. His primary research focuses on Actor-Network Theory, cultural theory, and popular culture. He is currently involved in the project titled Social Circulations of Knowledge in Practices of Human and Social Sciences. Among his other publications, he co-edited (with A. Derra and A.W. Nowak) the volume Polish Science and Technology Studies in the New Millennium (Peter Lang, 2022).

Speaker Information:

Ignacio Farías is Professor of Urban Anthropology at Humboldt University, where he also directs the Georg Simmel Centre for Urban Studies and the Stadtlabor for Multimodal Anthropology. His research interests concern current ecological and infrastructural transformations of cities and the associated epistemic-political challenges to the democratisation of city-making. His recent work explores how (micro)climatological knowledge entered the field of urban planning, how heat, noise and wireless signals come to matter in contemporary urbanism, and how human health and multi-species cohabitation are negotiated in polluted waterfronts. He is also interested in doing urban ethnography as a mode of making cities with others (designers, initiatives, affected groups, policy makers) and by other means (moving from textual to material productions).

Maarten A. Hajer is distinguished interdisciplinary professor Urban Futures and Futuring at Utrecht University where he directs the Urban Futures Studio (UFS). He is probably best known for his seminal The Politics of Environmental Discourse (Oxford UP, 1995). His research combines discourse analysis with the analysis of dramaturgical dynamics. His most recent book is Captured Futures – Rethinking the Drama of Environmental Politics (co-authored by Jeroen Oomen, Oxford UP, 2025).

Hajer has always worked across disciplines but has also sought to enrich his academic work taking up positions outside academia. He held the top civil service position of Director-General of the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency PBL (2008-2015), acting as the chief science advisor to the Dutch Cabinet. He also acted as Chief Curator of the 2016 International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR) and as co-curator of the public exhibition and manifestation Places of Hope which was part of the official programme of Leeuwarden/Fryslan, Cultural Capital of Europe 2018. He is now preparing ‘That is where we want to live!’, a major manifestation in experiental futuring exploring possible futures for The Netherlands.

Aleksandra Lis-Plesińska is an Associate Professor in Social Anthropology at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (AMU), Poland. She obtained a PhD degree at the Central European University in Budapest in 2013 with a dissertation on the politics of carbon markets the in European Union. She has worked on socio-technical transitions of energy and transport systems, public perceptions of technological risks and science-policy nexus in energy and climate politics. PI on a number of scientific projects, a former Fulbright Senior Scholar at UC Berkeley’s Center for Science, Technology, Medicine and Society and a research fellow at many European and U.S. based research institutions.

PII: Out Of Silos

Reimagining the Relationships Between Science, Technology and Society

How can we rethink the relationships between science, technology and society in a world of increasing complexity, specialization, and rapid technological change?

Out of Silos brings together three leading STS scholars to explore what becomes possible when we move beyond the boundaries between disciplines, experts and citizens, and designers and users. Rather than seeking easy answers, the session invites productive disagreement and fresh perspectives on what meaningful collaboration, participation, and engagement might look like.

Together with the audience, we will ask: What do we gain by moving out of silos - and what might we need to change in the way knowledge is created, shared, and used?

Discussion Moderator:

Aleksandra Wagner is a sociologist at the Institute of Sociology at Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Her research focuses on sociotechnical change, energy transitions, environmental sociology, public communication, and participatory processes. She is particularly interested in how societies negotiate and communicate complex technological and environmental transformations. She is also the founder of the Dialogue for Policy research group and has extensive experience in facilitating and moderating discussions, including those involving diverse or conflicting perspectives. Her work combines sociological research with practical engagement in policy and public dialogue.

Speaker Information:

Maja Horst is professor and dean of Arts at Aarhus University. Previously, she has been Professor of Responsible Technology at the Technical University of Denmark and Head of Department and Professor of Science Communication at University of Copenhagen. She has also chaired the Board of the Independent Research Fund Denmark, which oversees the main public research councils. Prior to this, she was a member of the Danish research and innovation policy council advising the Danish parliament and science minister. 

Her core research has been focused on public engagement with emerging controversial technologies, such as genetics and synthetic biology, stem cells, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence. More generally, her research interests have evolved around science and democracy, science communication, responsible research and innovation, as well as management and organization of research. She has published widely and has also been experimenting with interactive science communication installations inviting citizens to discuss the social responsibility of emerging scientific fields. For this, she was awarded the Danish Science Minister’s Communication Prize in 2009.

Sampsa Hyysalo’s research bridges S&TS, design participation, and innovation studies, focusing on how use and design can be arranged alternatively and to what effects. This has over the years lead to engagement in participatory design, codesign, open and user innovation, public participation, living labs, open design, maker spaces, peer knowledge creation, community innovation and citizen science. These engagements have been pursued in descriptive studies and through interventionist research, examining how new technologies shape, and can be shaped by, everyday life and everyday work. To achieve this he has been part of developing the biographies of artifacts and practices approach that blends longitudinal ethnographic studies and historical analyses to trace the contributions by different actors to design, innovation and wider sociotechnical change. His current work is focused on energy transition and citizen participation and in developing means by which diverse experts and stakeholders can better participate in the steering of sustainability transitions. Alongside he has studied for instances health technologies, participatory design at the public sector, organizational software and social media platforms. His latest books are Design participation (2025, Palgrave), Citizen Activities in Energy Transition (Routledge, 2021) and New production of users (2016, Routledge).

Jane Calvert is Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Her research is on the social studies of the life sciences. She works in close collaboration with scientists, engineers, artists, designers and policy makers. Much of her work has been on synthetic biology, but she is currently part of on an artist-led project called ‘Pollinator Pathmaker’, which designs gardens for pollinators rather than people. Her book A Place for Science and Technology Studies was published Open Access by MIT Press in 2024.