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2014 was a busy year for the Bassetti Foundation. In this post we describe some of the International conferences and projects that the Foundation participated in.
American Association for the Advancement of Science Meeting
The American Association for the Advancement of Science held its annual meeting in Chicago from 13th to 17th February, and Ottavia Bassetti, Jonathan Hankins,and Jeff Ubois were all present to represent the Bassetti Foundation.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an international non-profit organization dedicated to advancing science for the benefit of all people. Their publications include the journal Science and the association provides an array of print and online resources for educators, students, early-career scientists and engineers, reporters and the public.
The annual meeting included “Responsible Innovation in a Global Contexts” organized and moderated by David Guston.
The event was also chosen for the launch of the Journal of Responsible Innovation. The launch party was well attended, and the year saw the publication of three issues of the new journal. The first issue was reviewed here, the second here and the third will be reviewed on this website in the new year.
The Second Annual Meeting of the Integrated Network for Social Sustainability took place in Charlotte North Carolina between the 4th and 6th of April. Foreign Correspondent Jonathan Hankins was there as representative of the Bassetti Foundation and also presented during the poster session.
Prepared together with long term Foundation Collaborator Cristina Grasseni, Hankins presented a poster entitled Food Sovereignty and Social Innovation Through Solidarity Economy Networks. The joint authors presented work-in-progress insights into solidarity economies as a form of active citizenship that orient responsible social innovation toward economic sovereignty and social sustainability.
The foundation’s involvement in the INSS project lead to the co-sponsoring of a multi media film competition. Full details are available here.
Netherlands Responsible Innovation Conference
The Responsible Innovation: Values and Valorisation conference took place on 22 and 23 May in the Hague, Netherlands, with the Foundation once more taking part. Jonathan Hankins once again presented during the poster session, with the full abstract available here.
This is one of the largest Responsible Innovation conferences to date, reflecting the Netherlands government’s interest and investment in the topic.
Avanti Artigiani“, and went on to debate the possible developments within what is often described as the Third Industrial Revolution, that of the so-called Maker and artisan.
Foundation President Piero Bassetti delivered a speech that is available on video alongside many of the other interventions here (in Italian).
Between the 12 and 14 June, the “A Matter of Design. Making Society through Science & Technology” conference was held in Milan. The Foundation participated in the organization of the conference that was promoted by STS Italia, organizing a panel entitled “Institutional design to foster responsible innovation” and chaired by Margherita Fronte. Video of the debate can be viewed here.
On 1 July the Foundation was invited to participate in the CONSIDER workshop at the European Commission in Brussels.
CONSIDER, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in Designing Research Governance, is an EU FP7 research project that aims to establish a model of CSO participation in research.
CONSIDER explain on their website that their goal is to “undertake conceptually sound and empirically rich research to establish a model of CSO participation in research, and the workshp involved preliminary presentation of findings as the project came to a close, with participants invited to pass comment and add to the first draft of findings.
On December 2 the Foundation participated in the EST-Frame Final Conference once again in Brussels. The conference was entitled “Assessing emerging technologies – Towards an integrated approach”. The conference included the presentation of TranSTEP, a conceptual assessment approach targeted towards policy makers commissioning assessments and professionals conducting assessments. The acronym stands for TranS-domain Technology Evaluation Process.
