[EASST-Eurograd] EASST 2026 CFA Panel P014: Commoning socio-technical frontiers

[Oli Moore via Eurograd]

Dear All, 

 

Just to follow on from other calls, we are also really excited to invite submissions for our Open panel P014- "Commoning socio-technical frontiers: Navigating cutting-edge science and technology through the lens of sympoiesis" for the EASST 2026 conference in Krakow 8-11 September 2026

  

Short Abstract

Frontier technologies are entangled with narratives about nature and our relation to it. Such narratives are both affective and instrumental in contexts of hope and unity in divided societies. This panel seeks to explore these ideas through commoning (bringing together) and symbioses (making-with).

Long Abstract

Frontier technologies are entangled with narratives about radically transforming nature and our relation to it. Such narratives are both affective and instrumental, creating, disrupting and redistributing hopes for the future world, uniting even as they divide society (Hajer, 2025). Can we establish a symbiosis between natural and techno-lifeforms built on a shared capacity to inform actions and life-choices? How do expert and non-expert communities navigate the differentiated socio-technical imaginaries that create, design, resist, and direct frontier technologies? How do we balance competing priorities? Should there be red lines for the “frontier”? If so, how should this be decided, and by whom? More importantly, can we bring diverse socio-technical imaginaries and their enmeshed social relations into a sympoiesis?

Through the heuristic mechanism of commoning (Ostrom, 1990), this panel seeks to explore different sympoieses (Haraway, 2016) of expert and non-expert communities and their socio-technical frontier(s). Commoning allows exploration of different socio-technical imaginaries and lived experiences and expectations of what frontier technologies can be or mean for society (Beck et al, 2021) while recognising that these meanings and differences will often overlap or sit uneasily alongside each other.

The panel welcomes papers that broadly speak to the commoning of socio-technical frontiers, or the overcoming of epistemic and power asymmetries towards a sympoesis of socio-technical future. We invite papers on, but are not limited to, topics including engineering biology, agricultural science, biomedical technology, sustainability/biodiversity, space technology, AI, digital technologies and other innovative frontiers.

Submissions from scholars of the Global South and/or papers focusing on indigenous or marginalised communities are particularly encouraged.

Submit your abstract via this link: https://nomadit.co.uk/conference/easst2026/p/17737

Submission Deadline: 28^th February 2028. 

Panel convenors: 

Dr Oliver Pritchard-Moore (O.Pritch...@kent.ac.uk); Dr Katie Dow (K.Do...@kent.ac.uk); Dr Matthew McKenna (M.Mc...@kent.ac.uk) 

Centre for Global Science & Epistemic Justice, University of Kent. 

Please feel free to send any questions via to the convenors via their emails above and please also pass on to colleagues, networks, or PhD students who may find this interesting. 

We look forward to receiving your submission, best wishes, 

Oli, Matty and Katie.