European Biotechnology and Society Online Seminar Series 2020

We have now reached the end of the European Biotechnology and Society Online Seminar Series, convened by the ERA Cofund on Biotechnology. Over the course of six weeks (from 30.09. – 04.11. 2020) and six seminars, we were privileged to hear presentations from 12 groups of speakers and one discussant with diverse perspectives: scientists, philosophers, research funders, and social or interdisciplinary researchers. Speakers shared their practical and conceptual work on social, environmental, political and ethical dimensions of biotechnology in Europe. We were also delighted that each week more than 40 audience members joined us – and well over 60 on some occasions. Over the series there were over 200 unique registrants from 29 countries from Europe and beyond. Thank you for your participation!

We kept to a tight one-hour schedule to allow maximum attendance, but there were still opportunities for audience input and discussion between speakers. Interesting challenges and tensions in enacting responsible research and innovation (RRI) often emerged in discussions, including: What does it mean to innovate responsibly? How can RRI be adequately funded and supported? Whose responsibility is RRI? Should we even talk about “RRI” - is it a helpful term? And how do we innovate responsibly when many systems incentivise irresponsibility? Early feedback suggests that the audience valued the format, the variety of speakers, and the discussion sessions. We will continue to review feedback and communicate what we have learned from the series. We are also considering how this series might continue in the future.

Speakers, topics and materials

Wednesday 30^th September - Seminar materials:

Diverse routes to dissemination and engagement in MeMBrane. – Alan Goddard (Aston University)
Breaking the impasse: Towards a forward‐looking governance framework for gene editing with plants. – Phil Macnaghten (Wageningen University) and Michelle Habets (Rathenau Instituut)
- Presentation
- Research article

Wednesday 7^th October

Provenance Assessment as a method for integrating RRI into the research process. – Alfred Nordmann and Janine Gondolf (TU Darmstadt)
- Presentation
- SUSPHIRE project website
Responsible innovation and transformative innovation policy as frameworks for research funding policy – Cecilie Mathiesen, Øystein Rønning and Helge Rynning (Norwegian Research Council)
- Presentation
- A framework for Responsible Innovation

Wednesday 14^th October

RRI in CoBioTech: Challenges and opportunities of using Lego Serious Play. – Eleanor Hadley Kershaw (University of Nottingham), Stevienna de Saille (University of Sheffield) and Carmen McLeod (University of Newcastle)
“What are we talking about? Understanding how context matters for assessing biotech innovations in agriculture” - Amy Clare & Ruth Müller (Munich Center for Technology in Society,TU Munich)
- Presentation available upon request (please contact the speakers)
- Public Imaginations of Genome Editing in Livestock

Wednesday 21st October

Sustainable Co-Production: stakeholders and knowledgeholders. – Ursula Weisenfeld, Cristina Blohm and Antoniya Hauerwaas (Leuphana University of Lüneberg)
- Presentation
- Sustainable co-production project website
Responsible innovation in the Centre for Digital Life, Norway. – Trygve Brautaset (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)
- Presentation
- Centre for Digital Life Norway
The Walkshop Approach to Science and Technology Ethics (https://digitallifenorway.org/media/fm/c1a11c6288.pdf )

Wednesday 28th October

An ethnographic approach to assess the social impact of a biotechnological intervention in wine: methodological considerations and a pint of results from CoolWine. – Mabel Gracia Arnaiz, Veronica Anzil and Lina Casadó (Universitat Rovira i Virgili)
- Presentation
- CoolWine project
Opening up plant synthetic biology. – Jim Haseloff (University of Cambridge)
- Presentation
- OpenPlant Synthetic Biology Research Centre
- Biomaker
- 2020 Biomaker Challenge
- No-Code Programming Workshop, Autumn 2020
- Haseloff Lab, University of Cambridge miscellaneous links and information

Wednesday 4th November

Implementing RRI: integrating life cycle analysis & stakeholder engagement. – Eva Sevigné-Itoiz, Lorenzo Di Lucia, Onesmus Mwabonje and Jeremy Woods (Imperial College London)
- Presentation
- BESTER project
Navigating controversy and responsibility in industrial synthetic biology: the cases of Evolva and Ecover– Lotte Asveld (TU Delft)
Discussant – Michael Bernstein (Arizona State University)

Reviews

Jonathan Hankins in collaboration with the Fondazione Giannino Bassetti, attended the European Biotechnology and Society Online Seminar Series and published a review on the series in two parts.

Follow the links below to find the reviews and learn more about the content of each seminar session.

European Biotechnology and Society Online Seminar Series - Review, Part 1
European Biotechnology and Society Online Seminar Series - Review, Part 2