Transforming knowledge to have policy impact: Challenges and opportunities

1. Transforming knowledge to have policy impact:Challenges and opportunities Phil Macnaghten Phil Macnaghten | Institute of Hazard and Risk Research| Department of Geography

2. A personal journey Phil Macnaghten | Institute of Hazard and Risk Research| Department of Geography

3. Working at the boundaries Impact with excellence • Reconfiguring the debate through enduring relationships with policy actors, civil society actors and business • The mis-represented public • Configuring a ‘project’ identity of ‘misfits’ from diverse backgrounds • Retaining excellence • Innovative methodology • Innovative theory Phil Macnaghten | Institute of Hazard and Risk Research| Department of Geography

4. Some reflections • It was hard to get funding, under-recognised, and time consuming • Impact via intellectual and tactical entrepreneurship where traditional approaches lacked authority • It required critical mass • Universities had little capacity to understand its significance • Influence grew through acknowledgement of impact by external actors Phil Macnaghten | Institute of Hazard and Risk Research| Department of Geography

5. REF revisited Role for the social sciences • Much more favourable environment • Need to open up impact (conceptual as much as material) • Engage at different scales as appropriate to the debate • Understand the conditions of productive and enduring ‘relationships’ • Secure ‘criticality’ and retain independence • Acknowledge that funders are often ahead of the curve • Universities need to develop collaborative, team-based, problem-oriented Phil Macnaghten | Institute of Hazard and Risk Research| Department of Geography

6. Case Study: Public narratives of technoscientificfailure The ‘kept in the dark’ narrative The ‘rich get richer’ narrative The ‘Pandora Box’ narrative The ‘messing with nature’ narrative The ‘be careful what you wish for’ narrative Phil Macnaghten & Sarah Davies| Institute of Hazard and Risk Research| Department of Geography

7. ‘Be careful what you wish for’ • An ancient and classical narrative story of desire • The choice between good and evil • The dangers of seduction • The recognition that getting exactly what you desire may not be good for you Phil Macnaghten s| Institute of Hazard and Risk Research| Department of Geography

8. Our performances as morality plays • Nanotechnology as the seducer with its false appeals to eternal youth, control over nature, perfection, excess and desire • These driving visions, reinforced by State and economic priorities, for our participants, were perceived as in danger of exacerbating • Individualism • Conspicouus consumerism • Sloth • Insularity • Catastrophe • For all our discussion groups, bar none, the performances ended in tragedy Phil Macnaghten & Sarah Davies| Institute of Hazard and Risk Research| Department of Geography

9. Reconfiguring the debate • Beyond ‘risk and benefit’ • Beyond ‘attitudes’ • Recognition of the ‘in-the-making’-ness of public concerns • Require new interdisciplinary combinations (theology, classics, literary plussocial sciences) Phil Macnaghten & Sarah Davies| Institute of Hazard and Risk Research| Department of Geography