Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) encompasses a wide range of efforts. Their common objective is to tackle the grand societal challenges that Europe faces. To achieve this objective, the RRI strategy is to convey the processes of research and innovation towards socially desirable and acceptable solutions to these grand challenges. Read more […]
RRI originates from European policy in the 2000s. It is part of on-going reflection on changing governance relations between research, innovation, and wider society. But more recently it has been addressed systematically beyond its origins in the philosophy of science by several academic fields and from several points of view. Most recently, it has also begun to form bridges and connections with other literatures coming from different directions such as corporate social responsibility, responsible innovation including steering towards societal challenges, responsible industry and innovation systems. But how strong is the connection between RRI and these related concepts? Read more […]
The role of research and innovation in society is increasingly being questioned. In the past few decades, this trend has been exacerbated by controversies around the acceptability of some technologies, such as GMOs, synthetic biology or nanotechnologies. Or even by the decrease in young people choosing science and technological careers. In response, research and innovation scholars, policy makers, scientists and engineers, teachers, civil society organisations as well as industry and business representatives have started to work together on RRI to better incorporate societal values, needs and expectations in research and innovation. The trouble is that it is such a new field that there are no real established ways to go about implementing RRI. Hence, the project RRI Tools set out to identify various practices in the field of RRI as a means to recognise best practice and best tools and share them widely. Read more […]
Some worry basic science will get left in the dust once changes in the new European Commission are set in stone. But before we fret in the wrong direction, should we stop to think about what terms like ’basic,’ ’applied,’ ’innovation’ and ’society’ translate to in reality? With all arrows pointing to the need for economic growth, many have begun to wonder how changes in the new European Commission will affect the balance between basic and applied research. But scholars in Science and Technology Studies (STS)— a field that investigates the relationships between scientific knowledge, technological systems and society— say that this linguistic dichotomy of ’basic’ versus ’applied’ research masks the real issues at stake. Read more […]
European science conversations by the community, for the community
