Our resources in English

What is a Citizens Convention?

The Citizens Convention is a participatory procedure aiming at informing people about political decision processes on research and innovation issues. It combines three phases: a prior training (during which a drawn by lot group of 15 citizens are studying), an active intervention (during which these citizens are questioning) and a collective positioning (during which citizens are expressing an advice). A Citizens Convention offers an appropriate setting for general concerns without any geographical restriction. The only limitation is the level of maturation of the dealt topic, which must be high enough.

This articles was written by Claudia Neubauer (FSC) and Matthieu Calame (FPH) in 2013. It was published in the 5th GUNi Report Higher Education in the World: Knowledge, Engagement and Higher Education: Contributing to Social Change, which has been published in February 2014 by Palgrave Macmillan.

GUNI2013_Redesign progress_CN_MAC

This key note was held by Dr. Claudia Neubauer, former director of Fondation Sciences Citoyennes, at the EISRI meeting (European Intersectoral Summit on Research and Innovation), Trinity College Dublin – 25-26 February 2013

The article on  Opening Up Societal Futures through EU Research and Innovation Agendas was written by Les Levidow (Open University, Milton Keynes) and Claudia Neubauer (Fondation Sciences Citoyennes, Paris). It was published in EASST Revue, Volume 31 (3) European Association for the Study of Science and Technology, September 2012.

FSC and other NGOs have been fighting for more than a year for a fairer and greener program for Horizon 2020, the research and innovation framework program of the European Commission.

See here the  Open Letter to the European Commission concerning the Common Strategic Framework for EU Research and Innovation Funding (2014-2020), sent by more than 100 organizations of researchers and from civil society : Open Letter on the Common Strategic Framework for EU Research and Innovation Funding

The STEPS Centre from the University of Sussex published this Manifesto  in 2010.

The Manifesto states at its beginning: « We live in a time of unprecedented advances in science and technology. The world is ever more globalised and interconnected. Yet poverty is deepening, the environment is in crises and progress towards the Millenuim development goals has stalled. »

This pamphlet is an output of the STACS (Science, Technology and Civil Society) project, funded by the European Commission Sixth Framework Programme (Science and Society-19-044597).

The pamphlet

CitizensScientists_Pamphlet

Preface: Fieldwork

Consider the cauliflower. The cauliflowers we eat now tend to be big, white and fluffy. They have been bred this way over the last 30 years, taking the place of the various Italian varieties that were once bred on farms. Europe has largely forgotten the other possible shapes, colours – green, yellow, pink and purple – and flavours of cauliflowers. In the fields and village markets of Brittany, a group of farmers, activists and scientists are trying to help us remember.

In June 2008, four NGOs – ETC Group from Canada, Bede (Biodiversité – échange et diffusion d’expériences) and Fondation Sciences Citoyennes from France and the What Next ? Institute from Sweden invited international NGOs to participate to a common strategic meeting on emerging technologies – BANG.

Report of the Expert Group on Science and Governance to the Science, Economy and Society Directorate, Directorate-General for Research, European Commission, 2007

This report is the product of an expert working group acting under mandate from the European Commission Directorate General for Research (DG RTD), on the topic of European science and governance.

Ulrike Felt (rapporteur) Brian Wynne (chairman) Members of the Expert group: Michel Callon, Maria Eduarda Gonçalves, Sheila Jasanoff, Maria Jepsen, Pierre-Benoît Joly, Zdenek Konopasek, Stefan May, Claudia Neubauer, Arie Rip, Karen Siune, Andy Stirling, Mariachiara Tallacchini

European Science Social Forum Network

The European Science Social Forum Network was a platform of non-profit associations and NGOs as well as individual persons that worked to get a model of scientific and technological progress engaged with a solidary, sustainable and fair society.

During the third European Social Forum held from the 15th to the 17th October 2004 in London, a number of NGOs and associations working on the field of science and society (i.e., commercial control of science, science and militarism, human genetics, agriculture, science and citisenship, etc) came together. The opportunity was used to stablish an informal network that would help us to coordinate campaigns and organize common actions, as well as to share information, documents, ideas, human resources, etc.

630 organisations de la société civile, dont Sciences Citoyennes, ont signé cette lettre ouverte alarmant les gouvernements sur une vague de plaintes COVID-19 dans des « tribunaux d’entreprise ». La lettre a été envoyée au Premier Ministre français Edouard Philippe. Retrouvez également le communiqué de presse expliquant l’initiative. 

À l’endroit des gouvernements:

Aujourd’hui, nous vous invitons, par la présente lettre, à prendre l’initiative pour assurer que les pays du monde ne soient confrontés à une vague de poursuites de règlements des différends entre investisseurs et États (RDIE) en raison des mesures prises pour lutter contre la pandémie COVID-19 et la crise économique qui en découle.

Partout dans le monde, certains gouvernements prennent des mesures pour sauver des vies, endiguer la pandémie, protéger les emplois,lutter contre les catastrophes économiques et veiller à ce que les besoins fondamentaux des populations soient couverts. L’ampleur de ces mesures est sans précédent dans les temps modernes et la nécessité de ces actions est évidente. Cependant, la portée très étendue du mécanisme de RDIE pourrait exposer ces mesures gouvernementales cruciales à des plaintes avec demande d’indemnisation à hauteur de plusieurs millions de dollars de la part des investisseurs étrangers. Le nombre de ces plaintes pourrait également être sans précédent et imposer des charges financières considérables aux gouvernements qui  croulent déjà sous le fardeau des crises sanitaires et économiques dévastatrices.

Sciences Citoyennes est associé à la coalition de 119 organisations demandant aux institutions européennes de renforcer la législation contre les procès-bâillons.

Un policy paper, ci-dessous (en anglais) a été publié ce jour :

Ending Gag Lawsuits in Europe Protecting Democracy and Fundamental Rights

The problem: gag lawsuits against public interest defenders

The EU must end gag lawsuits used to silence individuals and organisations that hold those in positions of power to account. Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP) are lawsuits brought forward by powerful actors (e.g. companies, public officials in their private capacity, high profile persons) to harass and silence those speaking out in the public interest. Typical victims are those with a watchdog role, for instance: journalists, activists, informal associations, academics, trade unions, media organisations and civil society organisations.

Article proposed and written by an advisory board member of Sciences Citoyennes, Christian Vélot^1,2,3,4* , about democracy in science and public engagement, illustrated by a concrete example of participatory research. This is an open-access article, originally published here : http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpubh.2016.00096/full.

Civil society groups ask the European Parliament’s Budget control committee to postpone EFSA’s budget discharge, as long as it fails to enact a serious independence policy on regulated commercial interests. Our demand is also to provide an additional budget for EFSA to pay independent experts and develop in-house research. 

La Fondation Sciences Citoyennes s’associe à la campagne de demande de rejet de la directive sur le secret des affaires.

Une vidéo en anglais sous-titrée en français (sous-titre à activer via le bouton dédié dans la barre de contrôle de la vidéo) explique les enjeux et dangers de cette directive :

N’hésitez pas à diffuser l’information et à retweeter notre appel : https://twitter.com/fsc_infos/status/699559325409243136

La Fondation Sciences Citoyennes est signataire d’un appel à rejeter la directive sur le Secret des Affaires. En voici le texte en anglais :

On 28 January 2016, the European Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee will vote to accept or reject the text of the EU Trade Secrets Directive agreed in trilogues at the end of 2015. We call on its members to reject it.

The text is the result of negotiations between the European Commission, EU Member States and the European Parliament, which spent half of 2015 debating and amending it. The negotiators have made clear that further amendment is not welcome. But this text is also a result of the lobbying of multinational corporations from the US and the EU, whose lobbyists helped a few officials at DG Internal Market draft and push for its publication. Of course, right now the companies appearing publicly to defend the text are only European SMEs and innovative start-ups.

As a result of a collective work, here is our Manifesto for a Responsible Scientific Research. Fondation Sciences Citoyennes purpose is to encourage debates concerning the scientific research aims and the means to implement individual and collective accountability in this field.

Des essais à grande échelle mettent en risque la biodiversité et la production d’olives dans la région méditerranéenne.

La société britannique Oxitec prévoit la libération de mouches de l’olive génétiquement modifiés, en Catalogne (Espagne). Ces insectes sont modifiés de façon à ce que les descendantes femelles meurent (à l’état larvaire, dans les olives), tandis que les générations mâles survivent. L’objectif de la société Oxitex est de libérer jusqu’à 5000 mouches par semaine, dans une région proche de Tarragone, sur une zone expérimentale d’environ 1000m2. Face aux risques de modification de la biodiversité et de dissémination, y compris dans des productions d’agriculture biologique, des organisations, dont la Fondation Sciences Citoyennes, demandent l’interdiction de toute libération de ces espèces.

Une information plus complète est disponible en anglais ci-dessous :

Some 30 activists representing 14 environmental, technology assessment and consumer organisations from Europe, the United States, Canada and Latin America met for the 4th International Nanotechnology Activist Summit in Berlin on October 6 and 7 2011.

This pamphlet is an output of the STACS (Science, Technology and Civil Society) project, funded by the European Commission Sixth Framework Programme (Science and Society-19-044597).

The pamphlet

CitizensScientists_Pamphlet

Preface: Fieldwork

Consider the cauliflower. The cauliflowers we eat now tend to be big, white and fluffy. They have been bred this way over the last 30 years, taking the place of the various Italian varieties that were once bred on farms. Europe has largely forgotten the other possible shapes, colours – green, yellow, pink and purple – and flavours of cauliflowers. In the fields and village markets of Brittany, a group of farmers, activists and scientists are trying to help us remember.

After a successful 1st TeRRIFICA Reflective Workshop, TeRRIFICA will hold the 2nd TeRRIFICA Reflective Workshop at the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia on July 10th and 11th.

This workshop is part of the ‘Science Meets Parliaments’ event organized for the first time in Serbia by the Center for the Promotion of Science in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, and under the patronage of the Joint Research Centrе(JRC) of the European Committee.

The first meeting of the European project TeRRIFICA was held in Bonn (Germany) on the 4th and 5th February 2019. Eight European institutions start to work together to foster competence for climate change adaptation in different European regions with a specific focus on Responsible Research and Innovation. The project embeds the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals, a landmark achievement that provides a shared global vision towards sustainable development.

Article proposed and written by an advisory board member of Sciences Citoyennes, Christian Vélot^1,2,3,4* , about democracy in science and public engagement, illustrated by a concrete example of participatory research. This is an open-access article, originally published here : http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpubh.2016.00096/full.

Fondation Sciences Citoyennes wants science to be closer to the real concerns of citizens. In Paris, Tania Rabesandratana spoke with the organisation’s director Claudia Neubauer about her fight for unbiased, participatory research.

Science in Society was Framework 7’s funding programme dedicated to reflection and debate on science and technology in our society. It had a budget of €330 million for 2007-13, but the programme has been axed in the proposal for Horizon 2020, the follow-up to Framework 7 for 2014-20. Fondation Sciences Citoyennes, a French not-for-profit association, is among those who are fighting to reverse the programme’s removal. The organisation, founded in Paris in 2002 by a group of researchers, has urged the European Commission to create a comparable funding stream for Horizon 2020 with a €1-billion budget, or 1.25 per cent of the proposed €80bn total budget.

Re-imagining Research Relationships – Co-creating Knowledge in a Democratic Society

This conference will provide an opportunity for policy makers, academics and civil society organisations to consider current practice and future opportunities in the field of research partnerships.

The 5th Living Knowledge Conference will set its focus on different themes to get more insight in processes, and develop specific policy recommendations that resonate with public concerns and articulated research needs and built on the experience and know-how of the previous LK conferences in Leuven, Seville, Paris and Belfast. It will be an opportunity to bring together some of the key thinkers and practitioners in the area of community based research, university/community partnerships and Science Shops and aims at providing options and opportunities for collaborations and ensuring that this area of work is prioritised on policy agendas both nationally and internationally.

The conference will also be a platform to exchange and discuss findings and results of the first half of the PERARES project. PERARES (Public Engagement with Research and Research Engagement with Society) is a project which has been awarded financial support by the European Commission as coordination action in the 7th Framework Programme for broarder engagement on science-related questions and structuring public engagement in research.

The project « Co-construction of knowledge and of decisions in research: the example of participatory plant breeding in agri-environment », was directed by the  Fondation Sciences Citoyennes, in partnership with the Réseau Semences Paysannes (Peasant seeds network). The project was funded by REPERE program called Network of Exchange and Projects for Research and Expertise Governance. The French Ministry of Environment implemented it.

This pamphlet is an output of the STACS (Science, Technology and Civil Society) project, funded by the European Commission Sixth Framework Programme (Science and Society-19-044597).

The pamphlet

CitizensScientists_Pamphlet

Preface: Fieldwork

Consider the cauliflower. The cauliflowers we eat now tend to be big, white and fluffy. They have been bred this way over the last 30 years, taking the place of the various Italian varieties that were once bred on farms. Europe has largely forgotten the other possible shapes, colours – green, yellow, pink and purple – and flavours of cauliflowers. In the fields and village markets of Brittany, a group of farmers, activists and scientists are trying to help us remember.

European Science Social Forum Network

The European Science Social Forum Network was a platform of non-profit associations and NGOs as well as individual persons that worked to get a model of scientific and technological progress engaged with a solidary, sustainable and fair society.

During the third European Social Forum held from the 15th to the 17th October 2004 in London, a number of NGOs and associations working on the field of science and society (i.e., commercial control of science, science and militarism, human genetics, agriculture, science and citisenship, etc) came together. The opportunity was used to stablish an informal network that would help us to coordinate campaigns and organize common actions, as well as to share information, documents, ideas, human resources, etc.

Scientific knowledge plays a determining role in the societal development provoking profound social, political, economic and cultural transformations. Traditionally scientific knowledge is seen as being neutral and independent but in fact it is contested and negotiated knowledge that is more and more influenced by pure economic factors and for which the economic and organisational resources are unequally distributed in the society.

Sciences Citoyennes – Citizen Sciences – is a non for profit organisation, which was created in 2002 by a group of researchers from various fields of humanities and natural sciences, by students and citizens.

Our background and our objectives

Our main issue is to critically question the role of science and technology in the construction of a society and to put science into democracy so that it serves the common good.

An advisory board including 29 people leads the association for a citizen sciences foundation.  5 staff members are implementing different projects initiated by this board.

To contact the Fondation Sciences Citoyennes:

The Fondation Sciences Citoyennes benefits (or benefited) from the following financial support (agreement, grants, responses to project calls…):

Our network

The Fondation Sciences Citoyennes belongs to several networks or collectives :

Citizen Sciences Foundation :  An NGO dedicated to the redistribution of the capacity for expertise and research towards citizen-movements