Identifying gaps in social and ethical foresight methodology for nano-enabled advanced technologies

Chairs: Ineke Malsch, Carlos E. Gómez-Camacho, Fernand Doridot, Andreas Falk
Partners of the International Network Initiative on Safe and Sustainable Nanotechnologies (INISS-nano) are joining forces in developing and testing methodologies for Safe, Sustainable and Responsible by Design of nano-enabled advanced technologies.
The aims of this session at the annual STS Conference Graz, entitled „Critical Issues in Science, Technology and Society Studies“ 2026 were: To refine social and ethical foresight with respect to “nano-enabled advanced technologies”. The scope of this topic included among others Ethical Impact Assessment (e.g. CEN CWA 17145-2, 2017, Malsch et al. 2024, UNESCO, 2023), Ethics by Design (e.g. Francis et al, 2023), Scenario Exploration Systems (e.g. European Commission, 2024), and Narrative ethics (e.g. Baldwin, C. (2015).
We invited participants in STS-Graz to submit papers demonstrating state-of-the-art social and ethical foresight methodology on key enabling technologies and advanced materials (AdMa), highlighting methodological weaknesses and opportunities for improvement of the methodology and its relevance to real-world impacts of AdMa and advanced technologies.
The aim was to focus the future research agenda in Safe, Sustainable and Responsible by Design (SSRbD) of nano-enabled advanced technologies on addressing these identified weaknesses and opportunities for improvement.

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