Calls | Call for tracks and special sessions | EUSPRI 2024 CONFERENCE (2024)

Submission Closed

Instructions for convenors of closed sessions

To be able to prepare the programme in good time, we need the updated descriptions of the closed special sessions and your lists of invited participants (with guests invited in advance, without contributions from the call for abstracts). It will also be in your interest to secure the attendance of your guestsearly enough.

Please send them to us by 4 March 2024 to the e-mail addresseuspri2024@utwente.nl.

Call text

The 2024 Eu-SPRI Annual Conference will be hosted by theKnowledge, Transformation, and Society (KiTeS) groupat the University of Twente Faculty of Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences in Enschede, NL, in collaboration with other groups within the university. The main conference will take placeon 5 to 7June with a preceding Early Career Event on 4June.

The conference theme is Governing Technology, Research, and Innovation for Better Worlds,and the organising committee are now welcoming academic researchers from a broad range of disciplines, as well as STI policymakers, tosubmit proposals for tracks and special (stand-alone) sessions.

Governing Technology, Research, and Innovation for Better Worlds

Policies for science, technology, and innovation (STI) can, among other things, be understood as attempts to create a better world. But what world is better, for what, for whom? Political, moral, and efficiency-economic values influence the direction and instruments of STI governance, sometimes explicitly, as in the recent shifts in STI governance to mission-oriented or challenge-based approaches, and sometimes in more implicit or hidden manners. Competing worldviews of actors involved in STI policymaking go hand in hand with questions of justice and equality, importance and irrelevance. The conference invites to identify and discuss the explicit and implicit, competing and complementary normative orientations that drive STI policy and research in the many contexts where it takes place.

Subject Matters for Tracks and Special Sessions

Where STI takes place, we find sites of world-making. The conference will explore and debate (a) what conceptions of “better worlds” are being pursued by STI policies and (b) how they are assumed to be achieved and designed. Also: What is the role of STI policy research in all that? In general, the conference will explore a range of questions including:

How are “better worlds” cognitively and epistemologically constituted, socially negotiated, politically justified, culturally constructed, technically and materially equipped, oreconomically priced? How are “better world” claims adopted and implemented through STI governance and policy?
What counts as “value” and “valuable”, and as “good” or “better” in STI governance and policy – and what does not?
How can STI governance and policy address justice and equality, and injustice and inequality?

Themes and Tracks may Address the Following or Related Topics:

(Comparative) analysis of STI policy, values, and imaginaries of “better worlds”: what counts as “progress”, what as a “better world“?
Inclusion and exclusion of knowledges (social, legal, cultural, ecological, and economic closure) – the role of governance and policy, and can there be “justice” in STI policy?
Global perspectives in making STI policy for better worlds: whose values, whose policies, whose worlds?
Values and mission governance – how do missions guide change towards a better world, how does mission governance handle trade-offs of values and how should these missions deal with an ever-changing landscape of values?
Futures, imaginaries, and anticipatory practices in STI policy – how are these shaped by explicit and implicit values, knowledges, and understandings of a (better) world? How can they contribute to governing STI for better worlds
Destabilisation and discontinuation of technologies, policies, and systems – creating space for better worlds
Crisis as obstacle and impulse for innovation and research (what counts as “crisis”?)
Transforming society, transforming higher education: Innovations in higher education for better worlds?
The role of STI policy practitioners in addressing values and worldviews
Methodologies for discovering, envisioning, and evaluating other (better, worse) worlds
(New/alternative forms of) entrepreneurship and innovation as catalysts of a "better world"

In addition to proposals on this range of topics, we also welcome other suggestions for tracks addressing interdisciplinary dimensions related to policy and governance in the field of knowledge creation and innovation.

Submission Details for Tracks and Special Sessions

Proposals for tracks may include different types of sessions such as full or early-stage research paper sessions, debates, policy dialogue sessions and/or a mixture of these. Proposals for stand-alone special sessions are also welcome.
Tracks: a series of 1-3 sessions under one thematic umbrella with coherent or different forms of interaction, usually more likely to take place among regular Eu-SPRI colleagues.
Special Sessions: a single session with a very openly defined focus, both in terms of content and format, designed to highlight a particular theme or interaction at the conference, rather with special guests.
Proposals should contain 500 words maximum including a title, organisers’ details, and session/track description, including details about the interaction mode and a list of speakers/guests (if you propose a closed session/part to a track, or if you apply for support budget).
Tracks/sessions can be proposed by (at least) two organisers.One person can only organise two sessions or/and tracks
Those selected for the conference will be asked to provide guidance for participants applying through the conference ‘Call for Papers’, and then support the conference organisers and the international scientific committee in reviewing the papers and organising their track or special session.
We would like to emphasise that tracks/sessions with external guests must definitely be planned and clarified very early in order to have any chance of being held at all. In our experience, appointments with guests cannot be made at short notice. Only proposals with clear information about guests seem plausible to us.
We can offer a travel subsidy of up to 1000 Euros for a maximum of 5 Tracks/Special Sessions (first come, first serve) on request (for travel costs for track/session participants who cannot settle these costs institutionally). Tracks/Special Sessions organisers need to apply directly with their proposal with a cost estimation and a list of the names of the planned beneficiaries and an explanation why support is needed and why the grant will make the difference for organising the session. Eligibility criteria are relevancy and need. The final decision is at the discretion of the organising committee.
If you have a high number of members in your track who are traveling a far distance and you feel this requires special support, please, address this in your application for further discussion. There will be travel grants and conference waivers for specific circ*mstances.More details will be provided when registration opens.

Please, submit your proposal on the submission page by 15 November 2023 at the latest. Organisers will be notified of the acceptance of their proposals prior to the opening of the Call for Papers.

If you need help with proposal submission, please, contact euspri2024@utwente.nl.