The 2009 conference is hosted by The Science Shop, Queen's University Belfast

Science Shops of the future: Opportunities, challenges, expectations

Since the first Science Shops were established, their boundaries have changed.  During the past decades, with the advent of global data networks, more scientific expertise is available to NGOs and NGOs are increasingly considered to be important players in the political arena.  In Europe universities are undergoing extensive reforms:  their organisational structures, curricula, and reward systems are being revised.  It would seem that taking societal demands into account should be a priority when developing science policy.

How can Science Shops best fulfil their mission in view of new opportunities and challenges?  What kind of future activities might Science Shop undertake?

The workshop will consist of a 10 minute introduction during which the following questions will be raised:

- How can Science Shop support citizens in information retrieval from global data networks?

- How do ongoing university reforms and changes in the scientific communities' reward systems impact on Science Shops?

- Where are opportunities for Science Shop activities in an environment of buzzwords such as "living labs", "mode 2", "prosumers" and "wikiality"?

- What impact does it have on Science Shops that scientific expertise is being used by NGOs and their opponents in political controversies?

- How can cooperation be built up with the existing broad range of NGOs?

- Under which conditions can genuine co-creation of knowledge happen and which structures may risk weakening this process?

Theme: Knowledge exchange, transfer or exploitation?

Presenters Name: Michael Straehle, Christine Urban

Presenters Institution: Wissenschaftsladen Wien - Science Shop Vienna

Presenters Biography:

Michael Strähle, Dr. phil. (1963), is a philosopher, who has studied law and Chinese (University of Vienna).  His dissertation was on practical philosophy.  He has extensive hands-on experience in collaborating with small to medium CSOs.   He has published and lectured on such topics as ethical and social aspects of modern ICT, censorship and science & culture. 

Together with G. Froehlich (Johannes Kepler University Linz), he initiated the international research network "Science as/in Culture: Scientific Misconduct, Evaluation, Media".  He is a member of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology, the Society for Social Studies of Science, and the International Network on Information Ethics.  He participated in PARCEL, ISSNET, INTERACTS.

Christine Urban, Mag.a phil. (1961), sociologist, has studied social and applied psychology, languages, informatics and history at the University of Vienna where her particular interests were health research, gender studies, and the labour market.  She completed her study at the State College of Education in Lower Austria and has experience in secondary school teaching, adult education and language training.

 She has extensive hands-on experience of collaboration with small to medium CSOs and has coordinated research requests and students´ circles in interdisciplinary projects.  She coordinated the projects Student Mothers at Vienna´s Universities and Child-caring Women in Higher Education in Vienna (Die Evaluierung der Situation studierender Mütter an den Wiener Universitäten, Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2002.  She has published research on science shops and participated in PARCEL, ISSNET, INTERACTS.