Vienna STS Talks

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), Ethics, Social and Legal Implications, Integration, Engagement and Upstream Engagement. These are all frameworks -- materializations of particular values, imaginaries, fears, practices and norms/laws -- that have been developed, deployed and practiced in contemporary science policy to transform the governance of science, and particularly, emergent technoscience. Within these frameworks the social sciences emerge as an important actor.
Using my experience as the ‘in-house’ social scientist at a nanofabrication facility, I will adopt a feminist theoretical framework to critically examine the assumptions and implementation of ‘integration’. I start by taking us on a historical trip through these concepts, and will then examine what it means to ‘care’ for nanotechnology and how it was a task designed to fail. Finally, I will discuss what I think are some of the main implications for RRI, the current model of scientific governance in Europe (under H2020).