The crown and citizens

The world is in an acute crisis. All the citizens on this planet are now fighting against coronavirus and no one can foresee when and how the disaster comes to the end. Yet, a large number of civic tech communities have collected data on their own and launched new websites and apps to map and… Continue reading The crown and citizens

Belgium-Japan Joint Workshop on Citizen Science

Belgium-Japan Joint Workshop: Bridging STS Research on Citizen Science between Belgium and Japan The bilateral Japanese-Belgian research project ‘After and Beyond Fukushima: Probing the Role and Potential of Citizen Science in Nuclear Science and Technology Governance in Japan and Belgium‘ (2017-19) was led by social scientists based at the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre (SCK-CEN), KU… Continue reading Belgium-Japan Joint Workshop on Citizen Science

Workshop on the Ethics of Molecular Robotics

Molecular robotics is an emerging discipline that aims to produce artificial molecular systems that can adapt to change in the environment, self-organize and evolve. By co-designing possible and desirable futures and co-creating the Ethical Principles, molecular roboticists in Japan have been collaborating with social scientists and stakeholders to participate in the governance of technology development… Continue reading Workshop on the Ethics of Molecular Robotics

Workshop on Opening Ethics Research and Research Governance

Open science and innovation comes to the fore in Horizon Europe by assimilating (or dissolving) thematic elements of RRI, but it remains unclear what is meant by ‘openness’ and how the existing ‘Science with and for Society’ (SwafS) concepts and practices (e.g. RRI, ELSI, TA) are related to such open approaches. One of the practical… Continue reading Workshop on Opening Ethics Research and Research Governance

EAD2019 – European Academy of Design

EAD2019 is the 13th European Academy of Design (EAD) International Conference held at Dundee, Scotland, 10-12 April 2019. As the conference title ‘Running with Scissors’ shows, the discipline of design has been evolving and changing quite rapidly in recent years. All the keynote lecturers, Craig Vogel, Ingrid van der Wacht and Ravi Naidoo in particular, were very enthusiastic about and proud… Continue reading EAD2019 – European Academy of Design

We have never been in movies

Hypothetical scenarios of a scientist in a movie are now in vogue on Twitter, many of which entertain us but highlight how stereotypically and erroneously screenwriters portray physicians and scientists in the media (Neill 2019). Although these portrayals appear still major in Hollywood and others, Hollywood, Health & Society (HH&S) in the US and Centrum Media & Gezondheid in… Continue reading We have never been in movies

Journey from darkness into light

This is a hot story of where the pepper grows. My research journey now starts from PE – not ‘public engagement’, but ‘positive environment’. Environment is critical for people to think and talk of any issues, let alone science. Well, science museums, public labs and lecture halls are absolutely comfortable if you are science-philia, but… Continue reading Journey from darkness into light