News

Call for contributions: Post-Normal Science as a Movement symposium

06/03/2018
The fourth PNS symposium will take place in Barcelona from 15 to 17 November 2018

The fourth Post-Normal Science (PNS) as a Movement symposium titled Between Informed Critical Resistance, Reform and the Making of Futures will take place in Barcelona between 15 and 17 November 2018. Science, as it stands today, faces a crisis of public and political trust, combined with an inner erosion of standards of quality and integrity. This crisis on multiple fronts calls for a fundamental reform. Post-Normal Science (PNS) offers direction to such a reform, as a critical concept challenging mainstream practices of science, as an inspiration for new styles of research practice, and as an inspiration and support for new conventions of research quality assurance that better respond to the post-normal conditions of today's societal challenges. This multifaceted nature of PNS is both descriptive and normative. It provides a framework for describing and diagnosing urgent decision problems – post-normal issues – characterized by incomplete, uncertain or contested knowledge and high decision stakes, and critical reflection on how these characteristics change the relationship between science and governance. At the same time, PNS inspires a movement of critical resistance and reform towards a new style of scientific inquiry and practice that is reflexive, inclusive (in the sense that it seeks upstream engagement of extended peer communities) and transparent in regards to scientific uncertainty, ignorance, values and framings, and towards democratization of expertise.

The call for contributions

This fourth PNS symposium provides a platform to discuss and explore the guidance that post-normal science can offer in finding a way out of the present crisis in and around science. The deadline for submission of abstracts of no more than 150 words using the submission form on the conference website is 8 June 2018. More information on the call for contributions is available here.