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This paper proposes and models a novel approach to public engagement with the use of algorithms in public services. Algorithms pose significant risks which need to be anticipated and mitigated through democratic governance, including public engagement. We argue that as the challenge of creating responsible algorithms within a dynamic innovation system is one that will never definitively be accomplished – and as public engagement is not singular or pre-given but is always constructed through performance and in relation to other processes and events – public engagement with algorithms needs to be conducted and conceptualised as relational, systemic, and ongoing. We use a systemic mapping approach to map and analyse 77 cases of public engagement with the use of algorithms in public services in the UK 2013–2020 and synthesise the potential benefits and risks of these approaches articulated across the cases. The mapping shows there was already a diversity of public engagement on this topic in the UK by 2020, involving a wide range of different policy areas, framings of the problem, affordances of algorithms, publics, and formats of public engagement. While many of the cases anticipate benefits from the adoption of these technologies, they also raise a range of concerns which mirror much of the critical literature and highlight how algorithmic approaches may sometimes foreclose alternative options for policy delivery. The paper concludes by considering how this approach could be adopted on an ongoing basis to ensure the responsible governance of algorithms in public services, through a ‘public engagement observatory’.

Techno-optimistic visions around smart buildings, homes, cities, grids, healthcare, etc. have become ubiquitous over the past decade. Using variations of machine learning and artificial intelligence, smart urbanism (SU) envisions an efficient, digital society. However, research shows that smart technologies reinscribe inequalities by prioritising the interests of the free market, technology-centric governance and data monetisation. Although there has been a growing concern over the injustices SU perpetuates, there is a lack of systematic engagement with power systems such as capitalism or heterosexism that underpin SU visions. A novel framework is presented that situates intersectional justice at the heart of SU. A mapping of 70 cases of ‘trouble’ with the promises of SU is used to address three core research questions: What are the ‘troubles’ with SU? To what extent are they intersectional? What can intersectionality add to the development of a just SU? The analysis shows how SU politics play out in relation to how users are understood and engaged, how different actors institutionalise SU and how dominant power systems are challenged. The presented strategy contributes to understanding not just the data politics in urban spaces, but also how they can be renegotiated and re-evaluated to solve multiple and interconnected urban crises without compromising on social justice. Practice relevance Citizen-led initiatives against SU should commit to intersectionality’s radical core to dismantle power structures to ensure local smart urban projects do not entrench global business-as-usual neoliberal agendas. Intersectional thinking can create spaces for deliberative dialogues between civil society groups and build alliances across groups that seek to challenge the hegemony of exclusionary urban policies. Urban planners and local governments, which are at the forefront of SU applications, should decentre technologies and rather focus efforts on working out how smart technologies can work in conjunction with other kinds of urban interventions, such as social, economic and environmental policy changes, collaborative planning, community development, etc. to herald more just urban futures. Designers of smart urban technologies should apply intersectional approaches to further challenge ‘Homo economicus’ (rational, White, technophilic, able-bodied) as the primary user type and to replace it with diverse user archetypes that express humanity, justice and generosity.

This paper gives one of the first in‐depth ethnographic accounts of organisational learning in a public participation organisation, the UK Government‐funded Sciencewise programme. It develops the concept of “organisational spaces”, highlighting the often diverse spaces found within organisational networks, and positing a co‐productionist relationship between these different spaces and the kinds of learning processes that occur. The approach taken affirms the significant and active role of space in organisational learning processes, in a science policy context, as well as demonstrating the importance of connections between different organisational spaces in enabling more transformative learning processes. Two organisational spaces are described based on in‐depth ethnographic and qualitative research in and around the Sciencewise programme 2013–2014. It is argued that informal, temporary and experimental organisational spaces have the potential to co‐produce more transformative instances of learning, making an understanding of their connectedness to more formal and routinised organisational spaces vital for future research.

This paper synthesizes recent insights from geography, science and technology studies and related disciplines concerning organizations and organizational learning at the science-policy interface. The paper argues that organizations do not exist and evolve in isolation, but are co-produced through networked connections to other spaces, bodies and practices. Furthermore, organizations should not be studied as stable entities, but are constantly in-the-making. This co-productionist perspective on organizations and organizing has implications for how geographers theorize, study and intervene in organizations at the science-policy interface with respect to encouraging learning and change and in the roles we adopt within and around such organizations.

Background:Debates about evidence-based policy (EBP) were revived in the UK in the 2010s in the context of civil service reform and changing practices of policy making, including institutionalisation of public participation in science policy making. Aims and objectives:This paper aims to explore this revival of interest in EBP in the context of the Government-funded public participation programme Sciencewise, which supports and promotes public dialogues in science policy making. It is based on in-depth ethnographic study of the programme during 2013, considering the impacts on Sciencewise practices and working understandings of engaging in the EBP debate. There is a particular focus on the advantages and disadvantages of categorising public participation as a source of evidence-based policy as opposed to presenting participation as a democratic act which is separate from discussions of EBP. Key conclusions:At different times Sciencewise actors moved between these stances in order to gain credibility and attention for their work, and to situate the outcomes of public participation processes in a broader policy context. In some instances the presentation of outputs from public participation processes as legitimate evidence for policy gave them greater influence and enriched broader discussions about the meaning and practice of open policy. However, it also frequently led to their dismissal on methodological grounds, inhibiting serious engagement with their outputs and challenging internal frameworks for evaluation and learning.

Low-carbon transitions demand long-term systemic transformations and meaningful societal engagement. Most approaches to engaging society with energy and climate change fail to address the systemic nature of this challenge, focusing on discrete forms of participation in specific parts of wider systems. Our systemic approach combines comparative case mapping of diverse public engagements across energy systems with participatory distributed deliberative mapping of energy system futures. We show how UK public participation with energy is more diverse than dominant approaches posit. Attending to these more varied models of participation opens up citizen and specialist views, values and visions of sustainable energy transitions, revealing support for more distributed energy system futures that recognize the roles of society. Going beyond narrow, discrete understandings of communication and public engagement towards systemic approaches to mapping participation can provide plural and robust forms of social intelligence needed to govern low-carbon transitions in more socially responsive, just and responsible ways. Chilvers et al. present a systemic approach to participation that combines mapping diverse public engagements across a national energy system with a distributed deliberative mapping process involving citizens and specialists, which shows support for more distributed and inclusive energy system futures.

This article builds on work in Science and Technology Studies and cognate disciplines concerning the institutionalization of public engagement and participation practices. It describes and analyses ethnographic qualitative research into one \"organization of participation,\" the UK government-funded Sciencewise program. Sciencewise's interactions with broader political developments are explored, including the emergence of \"open policy\" as a key policy object in the UK context. The article considers what the new imaginary of openness means for institutionalized forms of public participation in science policymaking, asking whether this is illustrative of a \"constitutional moment\" in relations between society and science policymaking.

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-021-00812-x.

Improving laboratory animal science and welfare requires both new scientific research and insights from research in the humanities and social sciences. Whilst scientific research provides evidence to replace, reduce and refine procedures involving laboratory animals (the '3Rs'), work in the humanities and social sciences can help understand the social, economic and cultural processes that enhance or impede humane ways of knowing and working with laboratory animals. However, communication across these disciplinary perspectives is currently limited, and they design research programmes, generate results, engage users, and seek to influence policy in different ways. To facilitate dialogue and future research at this interface, we convened an interdisciplinary group of 45 life scientists, social scientists, humanities scholars, non-governmental organisations and policy-makers to generate a collaborative research agenda. This drew on methods employed by other agenda-setting exercises in science policy, using a collaborative and deliberative approach for the identification of research priorities. Participants were recruited from across the community, invited to submit research questions and vote on their priorities. They then met at an interactive workshop in the UK, discussed all 136 questions submitted, and collectively defined the 30 most important issues for the group. The output is a collaborative future agenda for research in the humanities and social sciences on laboratory animal science and welfare. The questions indicate a demand for new research in the humanities and social sciences to inform emerging discussions and priorities on the governance and practice of laboratory animal research, including on issues around: international harmonisation, openness and public engagement, 'cultures of care', harm-benefit analysis and the future of the 3Rs. The process outlined below underlines the value of interdisciplinary exchange for improving communication across different research cultures and identifies ways of enhancing the effectiveness of future research at the interface between the humanities, social sciences, science and science policy.