Developing 'Alternative Practices' for Responsible Research and Innovation in the UK and Japan

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The aim of this Connections grant is to develop 'alternative practices' for Responsible Research and Innovation in the UK and Japan. Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is a method of governing emerging scientific fields that aims to provide opportunities to explore questions about the type of future we want science and technology to bring into being. It often involves engaging with a range of stakeholders in 'upstream' conversations to inform the creation of scientific knowledge. Even while gaining traction, however, RRI is at risk of becoming a narrowly defined requirement - a set of boxes to be ticked rather than an opportunity for reflection. It is also at risk of becoming narrowed in geographic and cultural terms. 'Best practices' for RRI are being developed in Western countries and then exported to other cultural contexts. Japanese researchers are beginning to develop their own formulations of RRI, particularly in the wake of the 2011 'triple disaster.' However, Japanese versions of RRI, looking for established models, may end up reproducing narrowed and formulaic interpretations of RRI, which are not adequately sensitive to differences in context. Juxtaposing the UK and Japan draws attention to the inadequacy of exporting methods from countries with established RRI practices to countries where those practices are still developing. Our approach calls instead for international collaborative learning to promote continued reflection and openness to new possibilities amongst all participants.We aim to mobilise cross-national collaboration to develop a more expansive and imaginative trajectory for RRI - one that creates a space for autonomous and critical research in the social sciences and humanities while also being closely informed by the scientific work. We will draw on the diverse experiences of the investigators across Japan and the UK and across the social sciences and humanities. We aim to explore 'alternative' rather than 'best' practices, in the form of heuristics rather than guidelines and case studies rather than tick boxes, to demonstrate and encourage the kind of broad, contextualised thinking necessary to develop science and technology in light of social concerns and interests.We propose two two-day workshops, one in Edinburgh and one in Tokyo, with the latter developing on the former. Our four focal topic areas for these workshops - synthetic biology, molecular robotics, artificial intelligence, and genomic medicine - reflect areas of shared interest across the UK and Japan and the expertise of the research team. The rapid development of these fields in both countries raises timely questions and concerns that will form the empirical grounding for our conversations. The primary output of the proposed workshops will be a strong UK-Japanese network able to pursue a larger and more substantial programme of research on alternative practices for RRI through a collaborative grant application.