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

该基金旨在为英国和日本的负责任研究和创新开发“替代实践”。负责任的研究和创新（RRI）是一种管理新兴科学领域的方法，旨在提供机会，探索我们希望科学和技术带来的未来类型的问题。它通常涉及与一系列利益攸关方进行“上游”对话，为科学知识的创造提供信息。然而，即使在获得牵引力的同时，RRI也有成为一个狭义定义的需求的风险--一组需要打勾的方框，而不是一个反思的机会。在地理和文化方面，它也有缩小的危险。RRI的“最佳实践”正在西方国家发展，然后出口到其他文化背景。日本研究人员开始开发自己的RRI配方，特别是在2011年“三重灾难”之后。“然而，日文版的RRI，寻找既定的模式，可能最终复制狭窄和公式化的解释RRI，这是不够敏感的差异，在上下文。将联合王国和日本并列，引起人们注意，从已建立RRI做法的国家向这些做法仍在发展中的国家出口方法的不足。我们的方法是通过国际合作学习来促进所有参与者之间的持续反思和对新可能性的开放。我们的目标是动员跨国合作为RRI开发一个更广阔和富有想象力的轨道-一个为社会科学和人文科学的自主和批判性研究创造空间的轨道，同时也密切关注科学工作。我们将借鉴日本和英国以及社会科学和人文学科研究人员的丰富经验。我们的目标是探索“替代”而不是“最佳”实践，以理论而不是指南和案例研究而不是勾选框的形式，展示和鼓励根据社会关注和利益发展科学和技术所需的广泛和背景化的思维。我们建议举办两个为期两天的研讨会，一个在爱丁堡，一个在东京，后者在前者的基础上发展。这些研讨会的四个重点主题领域-合成生物学，分子机器人技术，人工智能和基因组医学-反映了英国和日本共同感兴趣的领域以及研究团队的专业知识。两国在这些领域的迅速发展适时地提出了问题和关切，这些问题和关切将成为我们对话的经验基础。拟议讲习班的主要产出将是一个强大的英国-日本网络，能够通过合作赠款申请，对RRI的替代做法进行更大和更实质性的研究计划。

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.