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The deadline for submitting abstracts (500–700 words) for the workshop has been extended to August 1st.
About the workshop
This workshop seeks to bring together scholars with an interest in the role and impact of science on policy to offer fresh perspectives on this ever-relevant topic. This has been analysed for decades, resulting in a vast literature on different conceptualizations of impact and processes through which the impact of science can be materialized. However, we see a combination of issues that warrant a new stab at conceptualising and analysing the impact of science on policy.
First, the Covid crisis has reignited the debate about how science can be mobilised to increase resilience and be used for firefighting acute crises. Second, governments all over the world have committed themselves to proactively push for major, unprecedented transformations. This means that the pendulum has swung back: after decades of rather limited state intervention in the development of socio-technical transformation, the state has now reclaimed responsibility for the direction and speed of socio-technical transformations. Given the urgency and complexity of those transformations, more than ever it is science the state turns to, not only for technical solutions, but also for advice on how policy shall be framed to achieve its ambitious aims.
The growing demands on science to analyse and translate the complexity of transformation processes, and to contribute to solving the manifold challenges that our societies are facing, has become a driver for new policy designs for research. It is no longer assumed, for instance, that any investment in scientific research is likely to generate useful knowledge that can help address these challenges. This has shifted the core of the analysis away from the production and producers of knowledge and towards knowledge users and their expectations to and demands on science. Is today’s science system tailored to meet the needs of the users, and how can science be better aligned with policy while also considering the diversity of values and interests that come with a pluralist society?
A main assumption underlying the work in the OSIRIS centre that hosts the workshop, has been that the new demands science is facing have severe implications for the relationship between science and policy. We encourage scholars who are interested in conceptual and empirical work on science-policy interactions to contribute to the workshop to advance our understanding of how this relationship is changing. In particular, we invite contributions about the interaction between science and policy with a special focus on the “user side” and how the policy making arena engages in and makes demands on science. We encourage papers addressing questions such as:
- What is the role of the user in the processes of knowledge generation and application in policy?
- What are the organisational structures emerging to promote and facilitate the application of new knowledge to the solution of societal problems?
- What are the changing ways in which policymakers interact with scientists working from academic organisations?
Important dates
- Submission of abstract (500-750 words): August 1st, 2023
- Submission of draft version of full papers (5000-8000 words): October 2nd, 2023
- Workshop: October 13th, 2023
How to submit an abstract
Please submit your extended abstract and draft version of full paper by email to Silje Maria Tellmann (s.m.tellmann@tik.uio.no).
Anyone interested may specify if they also wish to submit to the special issue we are editing for Science and Public Policy on the subject.
Location of workshop and host
The workshop will take place at the University of Oslo. Oslo Institute for Research on the Impact of Science (OSIRIS) will host lunch and dinner. We expect all participants to read all papers and to act as commentator on one of them.