Keynote 1: Cultivating Responsible Research and Innovation: An Open Conversation
Speaker: Prof. Dr. Ruth Müller, Technical University of Munich
Monday, May 16, 13:30-14:45h via Zoom
In this conversation with Prof. Ruth Müller, we will unpack the notion of „Responsible Research and Innovation“ and discuss what it might mean to conduct research and develop new technologies "responsibly." We will explore issues of interdisciplinarity, including collaborations with the social sciences, public engagement and co-creation as well as the role of diversity and social justice for research. Finally, we will discuss what changes are needed to develop responsible research and innovation cultures in research groups, institutions and across the research systems.
About the speaker:
Ruth Müller is a researcher in the interdisciplinary research field of Science & Technology studies. She has studied molecular biology (M.Sc.; 2000-2007) and sociology (PhD; 2007-2012) at the University of Vienna, Austria. During her studies, she conducted research on breast cancer at the Medical University of Vienna (2001-2005) before she started to work on issues of life sciences, society & policy at the Department of Science and Technology Studies at the University of Vienna (2005-2011). She held postdoctoral positions at the Austrian Institute of International Affairs (2012-2013) and at the Research Policy Institute, Lund University, Sweden (2013-2015), and she has been a recurring visiting research the Science & Justice Research Center, University of California Santa Cruz, U.S.. In February 2015, she was appointed Assistant Professor of Science & Technology Policy at the Munich Center for Technology in Society, a co-appointment with the TUM School of Management and the TUM School of Life Sciences.
Keynote 2: New responsibilities of scientific advising in times of embedded crises
Speaker: Prof. Dr. Oliver Ibert, Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space
Wednesday, May 18, 9:15-10:30h via Zoom
Contemporary times can be characterized not only by the more frequent occurrence of crises, but at the same time by a qualitative change in crises. Crises increasingly cross boundaries in geographical, organizational and sectoral terms, and instead of marking a temporary exceptional situation of uncertainty, urgency and threat, they often have a creeping character which cannot be resolved conclusively either. Against this background, the understanding of crisis is expanding to include more and more different phenomena, and contradictory terms such as "latent crisis" are circulating. In the first part of the presentation, the concept of embedded crisis is proposed as a way to interpret the current situation while maintaining an analytically sharp concept of crisis.
An important characteristic of embedded crises is that the necessary expertise is distributed among many minds and is not fully available to the decision makers responsible for it. Most recently, in the context of the COVID 19 pandemic, it became very clear that policy makers, for example, are dependent on scientific advice. On the one hand, this dependency results in a new responsibility of science to contribute its expertise in crisis situations, and on the other hand, in new challenges. In the second part of the presentation, specifics of advice in crises will be elaborated and ways to meet the new responsibilities will be explored.
About the Speaker:
Oliver Ibert is the director of the Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space (IRS) and Professor of Socio-Spatial Transformation at the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg. From 2009-2019 he was professor of Economic Geography at the Freie Universität Berlin and head of research department Dynamics of Economic Spaces at the IRS. He obtained his master’s degree in 1997 at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg in Geography (major), German Literature and Political Sciences (both minor). In 2002 he acquired his PhD at the University of Oldenburg and in 2009 he completed his post-doctoral habilitation thesis at the University of Bonn. In summer 2014 Oliver Ibert was a visiting professor at the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Toronto and in autumn 2018 he was a Hallsworth Visiting Professor at the Department of Geography at University of Manchester. He is a member of the editorial board of “Raumforschung und Raumordnung | Spatial Planning and Research”. Since 2021 Oliver acts as spokesperson of the Leibniz Research Network “Spatial Knowledge for Society and the Environment - Leibniz R” and is member of the Leibniz Research Network “Environmental Crises – Crisis Environments (CRISEN)”.