Valgen

Canadians need meaningful ways to participate in decision making about how we choose, develop and use new agricultural technologies and products. The VALGEN team will engage the Canadian public to learn about their interest in, and attitutde toward, new agricultural crops and bioproducts created through genomics research.

VALGEN will examine both the impact and uptake of democratic engagement and the co-evolution of innovation with democratic engagement.

Research questions include:
• By what methods can the results of democratic engagement be included in scientific regulatory systems and other management systems?
• How is our future ability to enhance these opportunities for democratic re-engagement constrained by our past experiences of inclusion and how can we reduce the impact of these constraints?
• From an international perspective, what are the consultation, information and engagement issues and opportunities?
• Where are the connections between successful engagement vehicles and contextual factors such as policy styles, institutional structures and political cultures?
• What is the possibility that democratic re-engagement will keep pace with innovation?
• What are the current best foresight practices and capacity related democratic engagement?
• What new methods and techniques are available to meet the challenges identified in the foresight exercises?

Publications

Castle, D. 2009. Public engagement and knowledge mobilization. Genome Alberta and Genome British Columbia Workshop, Publics and Emerging Technologies: Cultures, Contexts, and Challenges. October 30, 2009.

Culver, K. 2009. What next in the strange career of e-participation? Why contentious new technology introductions in support of eco-innovation might be the problem e-participation needs. Genome Alberta and Genome British Columbia Workshop, Publics and Emerging Technologies: Cultures, Contexts, and Challenges. October 30.

Einsiedel, E., 2010. Cultures and contexts in international public participation and multi-level governance.  Paper presented to the Society for the Social Studies of Science conference, Tokyo, August 25-28.

Einsiedel, E. 2010. Consensus conferences as deliberative public engagement. In S. Hornig-Priest (ed.), Encyclopedia of Science and Technology.  New York: Sage.

Einsiedel, E. 2009. “Stakeholder representations in genomics”, in P. Atkinson, P. Glasner, and M. Lock (eds.),  Handbook of genetics and society: mapping the new genomic era. London: Routledge.

Jones, M. and E. Einsiedel. 2010. Institutional learning as impact of public participation. Paper presented to the European Society for Studies in Science and Technology conferenc. Trento, Italy, Sept 1-3.

Einsiedel, E. 2009. “Blurring boundaries: Reconfiguring Publics, Redefining Participation”. Genome Alberta and Genome British Columbia Workshop, Publics and Emerging Technologies: Cultures, Contexts, and Challenges.  October 30.

Einsiedel, E. 2009. Health Canada workshop: S&T Foresight Development in Health Canada.

McPhee-Knowles, Sara. 2010. Research Project: A Comparison of Expert and Citizen/Consumer Perceptions of Risk in Biotechnology.  (VALGEN Working Paper 2010-o3).

Phillips, P. W. B. 2009. Democracy, governance and public engagement: A critical assessment. Genome Alberta and Genome British Columbia Workshop, Publics and Emerging Technologies: Cultures, Contexts, and Challenges. October 31, 2009.

Rayner, J. and E. Einsiedel. 2010. “Designing engagement for policy development in agricultural genomics: a policy cycle approach” at”Ten Years After – Mapping the societal landscape of genomics.” sponsored by the Centre for Society & Genomics (the Netherlands), in collaboration with the ESRC Genomics Network (United Kingdom) and VALGEN (Canada), Amsterdam, May 28-29, 2009.

Rayner, J. and K. McNutt. 2010. “Valuing Metaphor: A Constructivist Account of Reflexive Governance in Policy Networks” 5th Annual Conference on Interpretive Policy Analysis. Grenoble, France. June 23-25.