This project started with the observation that we are living in a world which simultaneously praises science as a source of progress and is anxious about the risks it might entail. In a time of increasing global connectedness, how do we think about the dangers related to emerging research and innovation? And how do these concerns translate into making science and innovation safe and secure? These questions were at the heart of the project SECCON, which sought to contribute to our understanding of security controversies in the governance of research and innovation in the area of biosecurity.
The project aimed to explore security controversies via two principal lenses. First, it developed interdisciplinary expertise based on security studies, science and technology studies, critical policy studies, as they emerge in the discussion around responsible research and innovation. Secondly, the project mapped and analysed the governance of security controversies in the spheres of biobanking and EU grant review. Through these two lenses, the project sought to contribute to both societal and scholarly debates on undesired side-effects and new dilemmas of new technologies and how to deal with them.
The research was driven by the interest in studying meanings, practices, and implications of security-driven changes in the governance of research and innovation. The methodology of the project was based on qualitative social science, using document analysis, fieldwork, and interviews. The empirical research was conducted in two areas – the ethics assessment in the EU grant project review and the governance of biomedical science. The first case looked at how security controversies are understood and dealt with in the grant review process and specifically under the ethics review of Horizon 2020 projects in the EU. The second case exemplified a leading European research infrastructure for biomolecular resources and biobanks, namely BBMRI-ERIC.
During the course of the project, the overarching theoretical and conceptual work gained more prominence. To bring together different social scientific perspectives on the study of the entanglements of science, technology, and security to address the controversies yet to emerge needs to be preceded by a thorough conceptual vocabulary. One example of such vocabulary is anticipatory governance, as discussed in a research article analysing how threats and risks are anticipated in biobanking. Related to this, the project necessarily expanded towards the broader question of socio-technical collaboration with security communities of practice, following both a personal engagement in a public controversy over the meaning of new technologies in liberal democracies and an increasing academic interest in this issue. The impact of the project can thus be located in this area.
