Engaged Science, Technology and Policy Studies: The Twente Approach

Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) generate sites for articulation, contestation, navigation, negotiation, and change in modern (and other) societies. STS aims to understand and conceptualize the material, social, intellectual, political and moral dynamics of STI in society. Some STS groups also get involved in the active shaping of technology and innovation. Our department of Science, Technology, and Policy Studies (STePS) at the University of Twente (UT), the Netherlands, ventures to combine theory, critical analysis and active intervention in real-world spaces for articulation and negotiation. While contributing to the institutionalization of STS, STePS (and its predecessors) has also ventured to ‘extitutionalize’, focusing on “opening up provisory spaces for establishing new connections.”