Last week, the EU-SPRI conference was held from the 14th till the 16th of July in Brighton. The Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex Business School hosted the annual event of the European Forum for Studies of Policies for Research and Innovation with the theme “Research with impact”.
More than 400 attendants from different European countries (and outside Europe) were present in Brighton for discussing and exchanging ideas, present emerging research and build valuable networks around science, technology and innovation (STI). EU-SPRI is the leading annual European event on STI policy, providing a dedicated forum for scholars and policymakers. In recent years has gained increasing attention due to the growing societal expectations placed on research and innovation, and increased concerns about how well research systems are aligned with the changing needs of society.
Our colleague Raúl Tabarés from TECNALIA attended the conference representing SocKETs. Raúl presented a paper entitled “Promoting societal engagement through social labs in key enabling technologies: Problems and possibilities for transforming innovation ecosystems”. This contribution was framed into the experimentation held by the SocKETs Labs that gathered a significant number of engaged participants for co-creating a number of societal engagement activities around Key Enabling Technologies (KETs) in three different innovation ecosystems (circular economy, eHealth and industrial automation) into six different countries (Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Denmark, Italy and Spain).
