Periodic Reporting for period 1 - GloRI (Resource-making in research and development: Governance and Power in designing research for sustainable mineral-material uses)
Reporting period: 2022-06-01 to 2025-05-31
This project explores decision-making processes on mineral-based materials in research and innovation for renewable energy technologies. It is guided by the question: How can decision-making processes in research activities be identified, and directed to enable more sustainable uses of mineral-based materials? The project works with literatures on Global Value Chains and Global Production Networks, Science and Technology-, and Innovation Studies, and uses sociotechnical imaginaries. These sociotechnical imaginaries may be gendered and carry information about how resources are perceived in decision-making processes, including on material uses for aspired innovations. This is important for work that aims towards more sustainable mineral-based material uses in energy system transformations. The overall objectives are to conceptualize research and development, and innovation in reference to global production to enable exploring decision-making processes with embedded sociotechnical imaginaries that reach across geographical scales and organizational levels. These insights seek to contribute to the advancement of governance and power dimensions in global value chain and global production networks, and to cast light on the importance of resource-making as a significant process in the transformation of nature for the reproduction of life. Project duration: 06/2022 – 05/2025
Please refer to the continuous reporting in bi-annual reports on work performed since the beginning of the project.
Progress beyond the state of the art is the identification of resource-making in decision-making processes of research and development, and innovation in institutions concerned with these processes (universities and research institutes, among other). Expected results until the end of the project may be obtained from the project description and continuous, bi-annual reporting. Potential impacts include profound understandings of leverage points for sustainable mineral-based material uses, at the point of resource-making which have effects at various geographical and organizational scales when successful material synthesis and strategic decision-making advance prototype materials to commercialization. These impacts have far-reaching implications for how economic activity is conceptualized: the transformation of nature for materials, components, products and services to serve the reproduction of life.