Delivering impact, steering science? Intervening in strategic research policy

• In Event: Questioning Intervention with and within Science and Technology Studies: A Roundtable

Abstract

One of the primary sites that STS scholars have sought, and been sought out, to ‘have an impact’ in has been science policy. Over a roughly three year period, we have been intervening, to operationalise ‘responsible innovation’ in the practices of a major public research funding organisation in the United Kingdom precisely for this reason. Our work has been funded by several so-called ‘impact accelerator awards’, schemes devised by UK public research funders to deliver and demonstrate the value of public research. In order to ‘have an impact’ — to re-construct as well as deconstruct — we have found it necessary to mobilise features of scientific practice that have, elsewhere, been the subject of our own critique. Linear models of research, mono-dimensional distributions of labour, and technocratic models of governing have all had their place. But what does this mean for the practice of intervention, and for science and technology studies more broadly? How have the objects driving our intervention changed, been relinquished and re-gained? Might it be possible to sense, create and sustain alternative forms of intervention and collaborative work in sites such as science policy?

Authors

• Robert David Jonathan Smith, University of Nottingham

• sarah Hartley, University Of British Columbia