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Meeting the Needs of Society: Experiences from Practices at the Science–Society Interface

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Abstract

The notion of science demonstrating responsibility to society by meeting the needs of society is key in current policymaking. Under the label of ‘responsible research and innovation’, many projects have been funded to study and stimulate practices of responsible science–society relationships, both within and outside Europe. Those projects collected insights into what constitutes a responsible science–society relationship and indicated how changes in that relationship are evolving, such as the roles and responsibilities of researchers and research institutes. In this chapter, findings are discussed to provide a broader and enriched cultural and international perspective on the changing science–society relationship. More specifically, results are derived from case studies in the Netherlands, South Africa and China.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    NUCLEUS: Bringing RRI to life, www.nucleus-project.eu/.

  2. 2.

    The Role of Universities in Innovation and Regional Development (RUNIN), https://runinproject.eu/.

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Acknowledgements

This chapter is based, among other projects, on work from the NUCLEUS project that was funded by the European Union in the Horizon 2020 Science with and for Society programme (grant agreement number 664932). The Think Tank event was organized as a collaboration between the RUNIN project and NUCLEUS. The groundwater pilot project was a collaboration between researchers from the University of Twente, Saxion Applied University, Things Network Twente, the municipality of Enschede and VRM, and was financially supported by Twente47 and the province of Overijssel. I thank Clare Shelley-Egan for her feedback on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Anne M. Dijkstra .

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Dijkstra, A.M. (2021). Meeting the Needs of Society: Experiences from Practices at the Science–Society Interface. In: Schiele, B., Liu, X., Bauer, M.W. (eds) Science Cultures in a Diverse World: Knowing, Sharing, Caring. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5379-7_6

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