The MCube lighthouse project Transformative Mobility Experiments (TrEx) aims to systematically understand experiments for sustainable and scalable mobility transformations, develop them in a participatory way, test them in a business-oriented way, and strengthen them with new tools and perspectives. TrEx sees experiments and crisis experiences of various types as key to the transformation of mobility. Specifically, TrEx addresses three types of experiments that are of great relevance for mobility transformations and will be considered carefully and in a differentiated manner: (1) Natural Experiments and Crisis Experiences, (2) Everyday World (Social) Experiments, and (3) Innovation Experiments and Reallabs.
People (working on the project at the STS Department): Dr. Alexander Wentland, Dr. Franziska Meinherz, Dr. Michael Mögele, Manuel Jung
Project leader(s): Dr. Alexander Wentland
Period: 11.2021-11.2024
Funding institution: BMBF
The Responsible Mobility Governance & Innovation (ReMGo) project pursues an approach that anticipates, evaluates, and addresses potential impacts, societal expectations, and ethical issues relating to research and technology, especially concerning recommendations for action and questions of governance in and outside the Munich Cluster for the Future of Mobility in Metropolitan Regions (MCube). This project is accompanying and integrative to the innovation projects in the cluster and therefore aims at a close exchange with as many actors from science, business, the city, and civil society as possible in the consortium. In the course of this, ReMGo analyzes and reflects political, social, and regulatory aspects in technology, product, and cluster development in specific MCube subprojects as well as across project boundaries.
People (working on the project at the STS Department): Dr. Alexander Wentland, Sophia Knopf
Project leader(s): Dr. Alexander Wentland
Period: 11.2021-11.2023
Project type: Consortium Project
Funding institution: BMBF
Due to heavy investments from governments and private stakeholders, quantum computing technologies have recently entered a level of public awareness and policy attention. This necessitates thorough investigation of the technology’s further development. Our group studies how quantum computing technologies are developed in laboratories, how eco-systems emerge around the purpose of quantum computing innovation and how the topic is received and reacted upon in the public sphere.
People (working on the project at the STS Department): Prof. Dr. Sebastian Pfotenhauer, Dr. Joakim Juhl, Jasmin Shokoui, M.A.,Cecília Peres, M.Sc.
Project leader(s): Prof. Dr. Sebastian Pfotenhauer
Period: 11.2022-11.2025
Funding institution: GoTransTech TUM Innovation Network
The Munich Cluster for the Future of Mobility in Metropolitan Regions (MCube) aims to use the Munich region unique, with its unique geographical concentration of innovation actors in the mobility sector, as a “learning region” to develop scalable solutions for metropolitan regions in Germany and worldwide. We are committed to sustainable, efficient and socially just mobility, with the aim of realizing leap innovations with great economic impact and high solution potential for global challenges.
Project leader(s): Dr. Alexander Wentland
Period:11.2021-11.2024
Project type: Consortium Project
Funding institution: BMBF
The project zooms in on different ways the prevalent “innovation imperative” for regions (Pfotenhauer et al., 2018) and related forces of globalization are being brought into alignment with local identities, culture, history, and politics. The sub-project Cultivating Creativity in Urban Development Projects investigates creative districts as spaces where local understandings of worthwhile innovations are negotiated. Through these different lenses, Understanding Regional Innovation Cultures 2.0 at its core examines development strategies employed to build desirable futures for their citizens in the face of policy expectations to connect these futures to innovation.
“Lost” regions of Innovation
This project explores “lost” regions of innovation, or places shaped by industrial decline, political polarization, and growing disillusionment about the promises of innovation to deliver growth and better living for all citizens. Lost regions are facing mounting pressures to revitalize and redevelop, with the expectation from policymakers that their transformation be linked to innovation. The microchip industry has recently been framed as a high-tech solution to post-industrial places, especially through the US CHIPs and Science Act, a policy that promises to bring semiconductor manufacturing “back” to America and redevelop rustbelt regions through providing jobs, national relevance, and essentially, a future. More specifically, through case studies in Upstate New York (USA), Columbus, Ohio (USA), Leuven (Belgium), and Dresden (Germany), this project examines how innovation is imagined as well as how semiconductor policy is taken up in both rustbelt regions and regions they are trying to emulate. The cases examine how desirable futures are constructed, how they tie into innovation, and how this innovation imaginary travels through different socio-cultural-political landscapes.
“Hidden” regions of Innovation
The research project Hidden Regions: Exploring Innovation in the Periphery examines how regions outside the well-known metropolitan regions and innovation centers are dealing with the pressure to position themselves as innovation leaders and how their future is increasingly linked to their perceived innovation and competitiveness in the eyes of policy makers. A focus here is on economically strong medium-sized urban areas with relative prosperity, characterized by Hidden Champion industries as well as solid social and institutional cohesion. In particular, the project explores how global innovation dynamics shape and are shaped by cultural, socioeconomic, historical, and political contexts at the local level. Within the first project phase, this question is investigated in the context of the region Heilbronn-Franconia. For this purpose, central actors from the fields of economics, research, education, administration, and politics are interviewed to analyze their perspectives on regional innovation cultures. In the second phase of the project, these results are used for a comparison with Ostwestfalen-Lippe and Emilia-Romagna. The results of the study are intended to illustrate the local embeddedness of innovation dynamics to highlight the importance of regional specificities at the crossroad with governed processes of urban transformation.
Cultivating Creativity in Urban Development Projects
Creative districts or cultural districts have become a governmental strategy for battling with local challenges – be it imagining a more ecological and socially equitable urban infrastructure or an economic revival – creativity has become a staple for urban development. Here, Richard Florida’s idea of the “creative class” (2011) still shapes current hopes to synergistically bring together technological innovation, start-ups scenes and a more grounded scene, routed in subculture, arts, and protest movements. Against the background of supra-national developments such as the Green New Deal and the New European Bauhaus Movement, creative districts have become a popular approach to imagine more democratic, inclusive, and sustainable urban futures, whereby respective understandings of worthwhile innovations and social order are (spatially) negotiated. Through extensive case studies on creative districts and creativity-based development strategies in Munich (Germany) and Bristol (UK), the project investigates the local-specific approaches to creativity-based urban transformation: How does the respective state-logic correlate with said approaches? Who is (not) part of the “creative scenes”, and which ideas of creativity, (sub-)culture, and innovation are circulating here? And what does this mean for the respective future of the city?
Project leader(s): Prof. Dr. Sebastian Pfotenhauer
Project type: Third-party funded Project
Funding institution:DFG
What makes expert knowledge credible, legitimate, and reliable for use in public policy? Together with colleagues from TUM and the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), Prof. Sebastian Pfotenhauer analyzed Germany’s political pandemic response as part of a larger comparative study organized by Harvard, Cornell, and Columbia universities and funded by the National Science Foundation and Schmidt Futures.
Project leader(s): Prof. Dr. Sebastian Pfotenhauer
Period: 01.03.2020-31.12.2023
Funding institution: National Science Foundation, Schmidt Futures
How can citizens shape the development of healthy and sustainable food, and what role should technology play in this process? What methods can engage publics on diverse issues across food, health and sustainability? How do innovation practices promote or prevent the democratization of food systems and address what are seen as major challenges?
Vertical farming is a technologically-enhanced approach to horticulture that has been widely invested with promises and predictions of producing healthy and sustainable food in close proximity to where people live. New technologies often invoke societal concerns, and vertical farming is no exception having been the subject of divergent claims and criticisms.
This project aims to gain a better understanding of hopes and uncertainties around vertical farming among producers, consumers, scientists, civil society groups and wider publics. It will do so by developing a Citizen Participation Forum (CPF) assessing the potential of vertical farming technologies to address some of the major challenges current food systems face. Combining a range of participation methods including online issue mapping, face-to-face dialogue and hands-on ‘makerthons,’ the CPF aims to stimulate broad public engagement with vertical farming technologies and practices.
“Cultivating Engagement” is a research-driven project that involves collaboration between university, industry and NPO partners, and is funded through EIT Food, the newest EIT – KIC (European Institute of Innovation and Technology – Knowledge and Innovation Community). Besides contributing to scholarship on public engagement in (food & agricultural) science and technology, findings will inform business partners and scientists in other EIT Food projects to critically engage in creating, implementing, and learning from public engagement schemes.
Project results :
- Waller, L. & M. Gugganig (2021). Re-visioning public engagement with emerging technology: A digital methods experiment on ‘vertical farming.’ Public Understanding of Science.
- Deliverable Report 7: Analysis and Outcome of the Project: DEL07(1)
- Deliverable 4, Part 1: Comparative study on citizen engagement with vertical farming between Munich and London: DEL04 Part 1
- Interview TUM Faszination Forschung – “Vertical farming is a child of the Silicon Valley high-tech world”
Partner
Project leader(s): Dr. Mascha Gugganig
Period: 09.2017 - 12.2018
Project type: ["Verbundprojekt \/ Consortium Project"]
Funding institution: EIT Food
This project aims to explore how transnational European research infrastructures have been both a vehicle for, and the beneficiaries of, European integration project. By studying how different generations of European research infrastructures embody different visions and models for European integration, we demonstrate how trans-national science and trans-national European sociopolitical orders have been co-produced with one another.
Project leader(s): Prof. Dr. S. Pfotenhauer
Period: 01.01.2019 – 01.06.2023
Project type: ["Drittmittelprojekt \/ Third-party funded Project"]
Funding institution: DFG
A comparison of five German urban regions and their adoption of best practice models of innovation
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What is the study about?
The project aims to place questions of local cultures, identities, and social needs at the center of innovation theory. A three-year comparative analysis of five different German urban regions – Berlin, Dortmund, Dresden, Karlsruhe and Munich, – explores how these regions navigate the tensions between abstract models of innovation and local socio-cultural embeddedness. This study aims to understand how each region demonstrates the purpose, mechanics, and limits of innovation differently.
All five city-regions stand out for their strong technical universities and recent initiatives to promote science and technology. Yet, beyond the usual indicators of innovativeness, we seek to understand sociologically how each city-region takes a distinct path to situate itself, along with its changing economy, history, and cultural diversity, in the “innovation society.”
As a result of the project, the concept of regional cultures of innovation will be developed, allowing local differences to be better reflected and accounted for in both innovation theory and public policy.
Why is this topic important?
It is virtually impossible to talk about economic development or societal progress without explicitly or implicitly addressing the need for innovation. Innovation is presented as an important driver of competitiveness and long-term prosperity. It is seen as an essential prerequisite for a better future and a solution to new and persistent challenges – whether in health, demographic change, sustainability, food, poverty, inequality, education, or transportation – almost regardless of where or what the specific challenges are.
Yet more than ever, rifts are also opening up when it comes to shaping innovation and the distribution of its benefits. Although innovation policy has become increasingly scientified and institutionalized, promises by science and technology initiatives to actually boost regions and cities nevertheless regularly fail. The geography of Germany’s declared high-tech hubs remains uneven, dominated by a select few research-rich and affluent urban region.
Popular models of successful innovation, such as the formation of clusters in the sense of Silicon Valley or the coupling of technical universities with the start-up scene, analogous to the U.S. MIT model, and the plans to reproduce this in new places, are reaching their limits in many places.
In connection with this, the innovation research itself also faces many unresolved questions: how can local, social, and cultural factors be seriously incorporated into theory building? How can social science research on innovation help policymakers as well as the public shape innovation initiatives in culturally appropriate and socially robust ways?
Project leader(s): Prof. Dr. S. Pfotenhauer, Dr. A. Wentland
Period: 04.2018 – 04.2021
Project type: ["Drittmittelprojekt \/ Third-party funded Project"]
Funding institution: DFG
“Digitization… what?” Often this is the first reaction of farmers who practice regenerative or biodiverse farming when asked whether they use digital technologies on their farm. GPS-controlled tractors, drones, or the Internet of Things are rarely a lived reality. For others the question may arise in daily work how certain tasks could be simplified.
This subproject explores the possibilities and limits of digitization in small and medium-sized regenerative / biodiverse farming. It poses whether digital technologies with its premise of standardization and automation are fundamentally opposed to biodiverse farming approaches. Are digital technologies fundamentally useless because standardization and automation are not compatible with biodiverse approaches, and if so, how? Which digital technologies and tools already exist for small-scale and/or biodiverse farming, and which ones are still in need of development? Isn’t the cell phone in the farming field also a digital tool? And what about the ownership, protection and monitoring of data collected from these forms of agriculture?
Together with Dr. Sarah Hackfort and her research team at the Department of Agricultural and Food Policy at Humboldt University, and in relation to our Canadian sister project “Diversity by Design,” we explore these questions through an online survey, and a participatory workshop with farmers, and representatives from technology development, design, and policy. Among others, the aim is to develop policy recommendations to strengthen smallholder farms and their specific needs.
Impressions of the workshop “Biodiverse agriculture and digitalization – between contradictions and synergies”
On October 14, 2023, we came together in the beautiful spaxes of ZIRKA, the Center for Interdisciplinary Spatial and Cultural Work, in Munich for a participatory workshop with practitioners from agriculture and gardening across Germany. The focus of the participatory design workshop was on whether, how and which synergies and contradictions exist between biodiverse agriculture and digitalization for small/medium-scale, regenerative and (agro)organic farms.
The 12 participants were invited to approach this topic by formulating visions of the future of agriculture and by using the speculative design approach. In order to better define the areas of work, as workshop team we expanded upon the graphic by Prause and Egger (2023) as a guide, and a selection of working areas formed the basis of the small group work (administration, direct marketing, knowledge transfer and everyday topics; Fig. 1.).[1]
In the first round, the four groups started off by create a mind map to reflect on what solutions are needed for sustainable agriculture. In the second step, the mind map was expanded to include the role of digitalization as part of possible solutions. This was an important sequence, as problems were defined first, and only then the role of digital technologies, which were understood as possible part of the solutions (Fig. 2.).
The next task was then more practical: based on their mind maps, the small groups were asked to specify what innovation would be needed in their specific farm work in 2035 to subsequently design it in a speculative way. Speculative design is a participatory method in which design is understood not (only) as a classically designed solution but as a critique of current realities of life. Here, ‘innovation’ becomes a provocation, and design functions not so much for production but for social debate.[2] In this practical activity, workshop participants therefore designed innovations that also functioned as a critique of prevailing knowledge, administrative, work and social structures in contemporary agriculture.
For example, one group that dealt with administration developed a so-called ‘data pool’ that would be owned by farmers and thus included not only agricultural data but also the very data infrastructure (Fig. 3.). Another group (on direct marketing) envisioned a rural community in which local politicians bear greater responsibility for providing public spaces for direct marketing, and with it, more opportunities for networking and consumer education (Fig. 4.).
Consumer education was also the focus of the third group on knowledge transfer, whose participants here saw an important role for digital information and communication technologies (Fig. 5.). The last group (daily themes and issues) was then dedicated to digital technologies for small-scale agroforestry systems, analysis and automation (e.g., drones), in which, crucially, humans always remain at the center as developers and controllers (Fig. 6.).
The workshop was a great success that was in large part due to the active engagement of the participants (and the sufficient amount of good food!), and we thank everyone for their time! We take away important insights for another workshop in Northern Germany soon, and look forward to presenting the analyzed data soon.
[1] Prause, L. und A. Egger (2023). “Digitalisation for a socio-ecological transformation in Agriculture.” In Jankowski, P., Höfner, A., Hoffmann, M. L., Rohde, F., Rehak, R. & Graf, J. (Eds.). Shaping Digital Transformation for a Sustainable Society. Contributions from Bits & Bäume, 104-109. Along their technology criteria we defined 1) planning, 2) administration, 3) direct marketing, 4) consultancy/recommendatioins for farming praxis, 5) daily themes and issues, 6) excessive production, and 7) knowledge dissemination.
[2] Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby’s Speculative everything: design, fiction, and social dreaming (2013, MIT Press); Carl DiSalvo Design as democratic inquiry: putting experimental civics into practice (2022, MIT Press).
Project leader(s): Dr. Mascha Gugganig
Funding institution: DFG
How can citizens shape the development of healthy and sustainable food, and what role should technology play in this process? What methods can engage publics on diverse issues across food, health and sustainability? How do innovation practices promote or prevent the democratization of food systems and address what are seen as major challenges?
Vertical farming is a technologically-enhanced approach to horticulture that has been widely invested with promises and predictions of producing healthy and sustainable food in close proximity to where people live. New technologies often invoke societal concerns, and vertical farming is no exception having been the subject of divergent claims and criticisms.
This project aims to gain a better understanding of hopes and uncertainties around vertical farming among producers, consumers, scientists, civil society groups and wider publics. It will do so by developing a Citizen Participation Forum (CPF) assessing the potential of vertical farming technologies to address some of the major challenges current food systems face. Combining a range of participation methods including online issue mapping, face-to-face dialogue and hands-on ‘makerthons,’ the CPF aims to stimulate broad public engagement with vertical farming technologies and practices.
“Cultivating Engagement” is a research-driven project that involves collaboration between university, industry and NPO partners, and is funded through EIT Food, the newest EIT – KIC (European Institute of Innovation and Technology – Knowledge and Innovation Community). Besides contributing to scholarship on public engagement in (food & agricultural) science and technology, findings will inform business partners and scientists in other EIT Food projects to critically engage in creating, implementing, and learning from public engagement schemes.
Project results :
- Waller, L. & M. Gugganig (2021). Re-visioning public engagement with emerging technology: A digital methods experiment on ‘vertical farming.’ Public Understanding of Science.
- Deliverable Report 7: Analysis and Outcome of the Project: DEL07(1)
- Deliverable 4, Part 1: Comparative study on citizen engagement with vertical farming between Munich and London: DEL04 Part 1
- Interview TUM Faszination Forschung – “Vertical farming is a child of the Silicon Valley high-tech world”
Partner
Project leader(s): Dr. Mascha Gugganig
Period: 09.2017 - 12.2018
Project type: ["Verbundprojekt \/ Consortium Project"]
Funding institution: EIT Food
Co-creation—the practice of bringing together diverse actors in a joint innovation activity to mutual benefit— has emerged as a widely desired key resource in current attempts to enhance innovation processes and outcomes. The European Research Consortium SCALINGS explores the avenues and limits for the wider dissemination and use of co-creation practices across Europe.
Through a multi-sited, embedded, and comparative experimental research design, SCALINGS studies the unique implementations and outcomes of three co-creation instruments: innovation procurement, living labs, and co-creation facilities. The consortium focuses on two technology domains (robotics and urban energy systems) across 10 partner countries. SCALINGS aims to strengthen opportunities for best practice transfer and a socially robust upscaling of co-creation, while improving our understanding of how co-creation practices relate to the social, cultural, economic, and institutional environments in which they are implemented. SCALINGS is an interdisciplinary project that brings together social scientists, engineers, policy-makers, and industry partners from all over Europe.
The project SCALINGS is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme within the specific objective Science with and for Society of Horizon 2020. This objective is to build effective cooperation between science and society, to recruit new talent for science and to pair scientific excellence with social awareness and responsibility.
Partner
- TUM (DE) – Technical University of Munich
- TU/e (NL) – Eindhoven University of Technology
- DTU (DK) – Technical University of Denmark
- EPFL (CH) – École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
- ARMINES/MINES ParisTech (FR) – Association pour la Recherche et le Développement des Méthodes et Processus Industriels / École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris
- ESADE (ES) – Fundación ESADE
- BOKU (AT) – Universität für Bodenkultur Wien
- UEW (PL) – Wrocław University of Economics
- UCL (UK) – University College London
- SIX (UK) – Social Innovation Exchange Ltd
Project leader(s): Prof. Sebastian Pfotenhauer
Period:09.2018 – 09.2021
Project type: ["consortium"]
Funding institution: Horizon 2020
Are we facing a constitutional crisis? As stem cell research redefines the meaning of life, big data systems subvert expectations of privacy, and nudge economics takes on the role of governments and regulation, science and technology (S&T) play an increasingly profound role in ordering our world. In doing so, they are not only ‘constitutive’ of life in contemporary societies, but indeed ‘constitutional’ – challenging both the existing social orders enshrined in our legal and political institutions and what comes to be regarded as desirable orders in the first place. This poses a number of critical questions at the intersection of science & technology studies (MCTS), law, and public policy: how to think about the constitutional foundations of society in view of recent trends in S&T? What are the implications of these arrangements for understanding rights, responsibilities, subjectivity, government, and regulation? Are conventional approaches to law and democratic governance sufficient to address the challenges of constitutions in a technoscientific world?
This German-American research exchange centered around a joint symposium in Washington DC will explore how science and technology (re-constitute) society through the lens of „technoscientific constitutionalism.“ We build on recent work across a number of domains, including bio-constitutionalism, infrastructure politics, and critical legal studies. As S&T frequently cut to the heart of social, political and legal categories, we propose to study these transformations and their consequences in three paradigmatic domains: biosciences, information technology and economics. Using thus a two-fold comparative approach (across domains and with participants from two countries), the conference will focus allow us to identify salient differences and cultural idiosyncrasies in technoscientific constitutions. We also want to find out how we must change our theories and methods in order to analyze the technoscientific constitutions of contemporary society.
Project leader(s): Prof. Dr. S. Pfotenhauer (TUM), Prof. Dr. Ben Hurlbut (ASU), Prof. Christopher Kelty (UCLA), Prof. Dr. Sabine Maasen (TUM), Prof. Shobita Parthasarathy (University of Michigan), PD Dr. Jan-Hendrik Passoth (TUM), Prof. Malte Ziewitz (Cornell University)
Period: 10/2017 - 07/2029
Project type: Array
Funding institution: DFG - NSF
This research project explores discourses and practical applications of innovation, digital technology and “sustainable” agriculture at the EU level and in Germany. Using a multi-sited, ethnographic approach, it examines agricultural practice, policy and debates on contemporary agriculture beyond usual comparisons, such as “high-tech” versus “(s)low / no tech”, and what (pan-)national, societal and political visions are reflected here.
At the EU level, the project examines political debates and implicit visions of innovation and digitization in sustainability targets within the European Green Deal, particularly in the Farm-to-Fork strategy. In Germany, the project focuses on regenerative/agroecological agricultural approaches and the role that innovation and digital technologies play, or ought to play, in these applications. More information about this subproject can be found here.
Project leader(s): Dr. Mascha Gugganig
Period:01.2019 – 12.2023 (pausiert 2021-2022)
Project type: ["Postdoc-Projekt \/ Post Doc Project"]
Funding institution: DFG
Project leader(s): Prof. Dr. Sebastian Pfotenhauer
Period:
Project type: ["Drittmittelprojekt \/ Third-party funded Project"]
Funding institution: NSF
Concepts and instruments geared towards responsibility in science, technology and innovation are increasingly being picked up by governments and organizations around the world (e.g. Responsible Research and Innovation, Open Innovation, Inclusive Innovation). Transnational policy organizations such as the EU and the OECD are key drivers of the circulation of these frameworks and practices, and of efforts to mainstream and scale-up local experiences and situated trajectories of dealing responsibly with science, technology and innovation. This project aims to understand the tensions, potentials and limits of generalizing responsible innovation frameworks and practices across heterogeneous national and political cultures and diverse techno-economic domains through a case study of the OECD. In particular, the project investigates the development of international guidelines for responsible innovation in neuroscience and neurotechnology.
Project leader(s): Nina Frahm
Period:
Project type: ["Promotionsprojekt \/ PhD Project"]