c:o/re Senior Fellow 12/21 − 11/22
Andoni Ibarra is Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). He is also the Principal Investigator of PRAXIS Research Group, the founder of the Miguel Sánchez-Mazas Chair, which main goal is to promote Science, Technology and Innovation Studies; He is the Editor-in-Chief of Theoria. An International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science. Andoni’s main line of research is on the performative character of scientific representations in the constitution of the world. More particularly, he has focused on offering concepts of representation not reduced to structural preservation, the relational perspectives for assessment of science and technology based on the connectivity of their practices, the articulation between different types of knowledge in the interaction knowledge-communication-interculturality and, in recent years, on the inclusivity of actors in the governance of responsible innovation as well as on the epistemology of anticipation.
Open anticipatory governance of innovation. Opportunities and barriers for a radical responsible culture of research in emerging technologies
The EU Framework Programme Horizon Europe (2021-27) is intended to promote a radically open, or participatory, research and innovation system. The open determination of the challenges and demands of societal actors is currently conceived through the construction of sociotechnical futures, that is, through anticipation, defined in the literature as an activity aimed at using the future to guide and orient decision making in the present. Authors have highlighted the axial character of anticipation for the concept of responsible innovation by articulating around it a fruitful conceptual relationship between futures, responsibility and open science.
In the common characterizations of anticipation, it is conceived in a closed way, within the framework of already pre-determined and established futures, allegedly expedient for a variety of purposes: political, economic, social… This KHK project, however, promotes an open understanding of anticipation, in which the collective problematization of the future states of a system is a basic condition for the consideration of possible alternatives for action. Under this perspective, the governance of the courses of action of this collective problematization becomes critical.
The objective of the project will be to contribute to implement an anticipatory governance framework aimed at assessing and guiding the implementation of responsible anticipatory practices in research and innovation in the field of nanotechnologies. This will be achieved by analyzing through practical experience the opportunities and barriers involved in the operationalization of open anticipatory governance. We will try to gauge how those instances are capable (or not) of enabling experiences of collective deliberation on sociotechnical futures and their critical-reflective use in the context of actual practices.
Publications (Selection)
Urueña, S.; Rodríguez, H.; Ibarra A. 2021. Foresight and responsible innovation: Openness and closure in anticipatory heuristics. Futures 134 (2021) 102852.
Rodríguez, H.; Urueña, S.; Ibarra A. 2020. Anticipatory responsable innovation. Futures construction in the face of the techno-economic imperative. NOvation: Critical Studies of Innovation 2.
Eizagirre, A.; Rodríguez, H.; Ibarra, A. 2017. Politicizing Responsible Innovation: Responsibility as Inclusive Governance, International Journal of Innovation Studies, 1 (1): 20-36.
Ibarra, A. 2012. Epistemic networks: new subjects for new forms of (scientific) knowledge production, Science, Technology and Innovation Studies (STI-Studies), vol. 8, No 1: 61-74.
Ibarra, A.; Thomas Mormann. 2006. Scientific representations as intervening representations, Theoria 21, No 55: 21-38.
