An IASH Work-in-Progress seminar, delivered by Dr Eugénia Rodrigues (Sabbatical Fellow, 2026)
Infrastructures of knowledge-making and digital participation in biodiversity and nature conservation – unpacking and deconstructing
My work at IASH focuses on developing a grant proposal that investigates the epistemic affordances of digital platforms in biodiversity and nature conservation. In this WIP presentation, I will begin to unpack what I mean by this statement. I will outline key elements of the rationale and conceptual framework, as well as laying out the main components of my approach as I currently envision it, based on exploratory empirical work.
Science and Technology Studies (STS) have a long tradition of studying what is broadly identified as public engagement with science and technology or, alternatively, public participation in science and technology. This scholarly inquiry was accompanied by the institutionalisation of public participation, in which policy settings became prominent spaces seeking the engagement and deliberation of publics in complex or controversial sociotechnical matters. Paradoxically, however, this movement towards wider inclusion of the public gave rise to what I term a monoculture of participation formats, where mini- and, increasingly, “big”-publics (e.g. national and global citizen assemblies) have become the ‘go-to’ options for an ever-wider range of social actors, not limited to policy contexts. Crucially, these are also ‘invited’ participatory processes.
My study interrogates the implications of this participatory monoculture, and how the multiple and creative ways in which publics participate in science and technology – beyond invited contexts (a focus also examined by STS) – can (re)gain a place in the ecosystem of which they are a part.
Meeting ID: 387 413 976 148 588
Passcode: jk7Dn2rE