Engaging Futures, Making Futures: The Art of Endogenous Societal EngagementIn this talk I explore the role for science and technology studies (STS) in the critique of technocratic futures and in opening spaces for alternatives. Drawing on personal experience from the UK context, I explore from where RI emerged, how it was put together, and how it was put to use, initially in governance debates on solar geoengineering and subsequently as an STI governance framework. First, we trace how the framework was designed to open up technoscientific cultures to wider considerations for a major UK funding body, the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council. Second, we elaborate on a particular contribution to the debate on the development of an anticipatory public engagement methodology, its constituent dimensions designed to develop endogenous engagement with citizens and its role in the construction of emergent social worlds. Third, we reflect on roles for STS scholarship in shaping the conditions for productive yet critical approaches to STI governance: the importance of breaking with dominant frames, of promoting endogenous public engagement, of commitments to institutional work, and of playing the long game in co-constituting enduring relations between citizens, stakeholders, policy-makers, technoscientific experts and STS scholars.
Date
- May 29, 2025
Casa das Campás (Pontevedra)