Responsible Research and Innovation in Academic Practice II: Anticipation, Care and Responsiveness

Session Submission Type: Traditional (Closed) Panel

Abstract

In current policy imaginaries researchers are expected to respond to societal needs and ‘grand challenges’, whilst at the same time maintaining standards of scientific excellence. In Europe these calls are being invoked under the banner Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) (von Schomberg 2013). Arguably, one of the more novel aspects of the RRI discourse is in signaling a shift from the governance of risk to the governance of research and innovation itself (Felt et al 2007). Ideal-type representations thus suggest a shift away from retrospective outcomes-based modes of risk governance (associated with accountability, liability, and evidence), toward embedding future-oriented dimensions of responsibility like anticipation, care and responsiveness as core values throughout the research process (Stilgoe et al 2013, 1569). Through promoting such virtues, RRI is thought to promise ‘greater potential to accommodate uncertainty [of research and innovation] and allow reflection on purposes and values’ (ibid).
At the same time, many structural, institutional, and epistemic conditions are being widely reported which would appear inhospitable for certain modes of care and responsiveness to flourish in academic work practices. These include: hyper-competition for dwindling state resources; narrowing career opportunities; commercialization and privatization of knowledge production and scholarly communication infrastructures; epistemic demands for positive results (in some fields); perceived acceleration of academic life and a loss of time to reflect; and the rise of new metric assemblages for auditing academic performance.
This session explores how practices of anticipation, care and responsiveness are being variously experienced by researchers themselves, and enacted in their knowledge-making practices.

Sub Unit

• 4S Annual Meeting

Chair

• Alex Rushforth, CWTS, Leiden University

Individual Presentations

• Caring for the group – and beyond? Enhancing responsibility through funding structures - Maja Horst, University of Copenhagen

• Imaginaries of responsibility and their performances - Gisle Solbu, Norwegian University of Science and Technology; Heidrun Åm

• Conflicts, contingency, and funding strategies in research on ‘grand challenges’ - Wolfgang Kaltenbrunner, Munich Center for Technology in Society (MCT

• Anticipation between Serendipity and Audit. Predicaments of responsible practice in the life sciences - Ulrike Felt, University of Vienna, Department of Science and Technology Studies; Maximilian Fochler, University Of Vienna; Lisa Sigl, Research Platform Responsible Research and Innovation in Academic Practice, University of Vienna