Institute of Hazard and Risk Research, Durham University Tuesday 15 December 2009

The second workshop of the ESRC seminar series Critical Perspectives on Public Engagement in Science and Environmental Risk explored the incipient institutionalisation of public engagement and deliberation. Contemporary science policy has taken a distinct ‘deliberative turn’. Across a range of domains – biotechnology, the life sciences and nanotechnology to name but a few – recent government policy increasingly speaks of the incorporation of public engagement and the social sciences into the development of new research programmes. Thus while there is debate as to practical implications of new forms of deliberative or participatory governance in science policy – and the extent to which this deliberative rhetoric represents an authentic renewal of democracy – recent debate is marked by a consensus regarding the anticipatory and deliberative capacity of public engagement.  However, such a consensus also begs many questions – how are forms of public engagement and deliberation being institutionalised in the governance of science, how can deliberative methods ‘anticipate’ potential public concerns, and will the incorporation of such techniques materially alter the direction of technoscientific innovation? More broadly concerns have been raised regarding the kinds of democracies being enacted in debates about the direction and purposes of technoscientific advance.

The workshop report is available here durham-report.

To read more about the seminar series see here.

Programme