University of Twente is proud to host from 5th - 7th June 2024 the 2024 Eu-SPRI Annual Conference:
Governing technology, research, and innovation for better worlds
Policies for science, technology, and innovation (STI) can, among other things, be understood as attempts to create a better world. But what world is better, for what, for whom? Political, moral, and efficiency-economic values influence the direction and instruments of STI governance, sometimes explicitly, as in the recent shifts in STI governance to mission-oriented or challenge-based approaches, and sometimes in more implicit or hidden manners. Competing worldviews of actors involved in STI policymaking go hand in hand with questions of justice and equality, importance and irrelevance. The conference invites to identify and discuss the explicit and implicit, competing and complementary normative orientations that drive STI policy and research in the many contexts where it takes place.
Where STI takes place, we find sites of world-making. The conference will explore and debate (a) what conceptions of “better worlds” are being pursued by STI policies and (b) how they are assumed to be achieved and designed. Also: What is STI policy research’s role in all that?
In general, the Eu-SPRI Forum conference will explore a range of questions including:
- How are “better worlds” cognitively constituted, socially negotiated, politically justified, culturally constructed, technically and materially equipped, or economically priced? How are “better world” claims adopted and implemented through STI governance and policy?
- What counts as “value” and “valuable”, and as “good” or “better” in STI governance and policy – and what does not?
- How can STI governance and policy address justice and equality, and injustice and inequality?
On 4 June 2024, an Eu-SPRI Forum Early Career Event addressing “Performing Knowing, Identity And Impact For Early Career Researchers” will take place.
Organising Committee
The Eu-SPRI 2024 organising committee consists of academics from the sections Knowledge, Transformation & Society (KiTeS) and Philosophy of Science and Technology (PHIL) in the Technology, Policy and Society (TPS) department, the Public Administration (PA) section in the department of Technology, Human, and Institutional Behaviour (HIB), and the Entrepreneurship & Technology Management (ETM) section in the department of High-tech Business and Entrepreneurship (HBE) in the faculty of Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences (BMS), University of Twente, the Netherlands, as well as from the Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) research group in the Civil Engineering and Management (CEM) department of the Engineering Technology (ET) faculty.
Sandra Calkins
Tom Coenen
Daniela Craciun
Michel Ehrenhard
Max Goethner
Florian Helfrich
Kornelia Konrad
Andrea Kottmann
Stefan Kuhlmann
Barbara Kump
Barend van der Meulen
Efi Nakopoulou
Melissa Novitsky
Ringo Ossewaarde
Alexandria Poole
Elize Schiweck
Peter Stegmaier
Karin van der Tuin
Esther Turnhout
Klaasjan Visscher
Beau Warbroek
Andreas Weber