The core objective of the IANUS project is to strengthen trust in science, research and innovation by fostering participation in research as a co-creative and inclusive process, sensitive to societal values, concerns and needs. IANUS will develop inclusive participatory methodologies to effectively address the growing challenges in science and technology such as gene editing, bionics and neuro-technologies, robotics and the development of intelligent environments, to reconcile the interests of researchers with the legitimate concerns of the citizens. The employment of participatory methods is an intrinsic feature of research activities undertaken in the project. This means studying the participatory dimension of trust to cultivate well-placed trust and address distrust along with implementing innovative methods, such as the social lab approach, entailing citizen science and crowdsourcing. In this respect, IANUS will work with existing societal co-construction labs, defined as any transdisciplinary co-working settings for deliberating science, technology and innovation. On these bases, the project will develop and test innovative methods to foster inclusive participatory research, e.g. crowdsourcing to broaden the range of public experience and incorporate public intelligence to address knowledge deficits in current research via co-creation.
The second and third year of the project will be dedicated to the organization of co-creation events in order to experiment and evaluate co-creation formats, using methods from participatory action research and citizen science (e.g. hackathons), design thinking, crowdsourcing, hermeneutic TA, vision assessment, artistic research, art-science interfaces, and role-play, involving experts and crucial stakeholders in the respective science, technology and innovation areas. We are very much looking forward to it!