Practising post-normal science through art-science collaborations: Institutionalising new approaches to future-making at the Joint Research Centre

Abstract

Post-normal science (PNS) provides an emerging framework for tackling complex, uncertain, and value-laden scientific challenges by integrating diverse stakeholders, multiple knowledge forms, and democratic procedures into scientific practice. Drawing from institutional theory, which illuminates the dynamics of organizational change and resistance, this paper examines the capacity of PNS-informed interventions to reshape dominant strategies for future making and thus institutional logics within scientific organizations. Our research is empirically grounded in an ethnographic study of the European Commission’s knowledge for policy service, the Joint Research Centre, focusing on the SciArt initiative which brings together artists and scientists to coproduce knowledge. We show how SciArt transforms future making by generating tangible and intangible changes to research perspectives and processes. PNS aligned changes included reflexivity, quality control, the recognition and communication of complexity, democratization of expertise, increased citizen participation, the de-stabilising of beliefs surrounding science, and art. We argue that the potential of such project outcomes to transform the practice of science and policymaking depends upon linked experimental spaces wherein these outcomes can be applied within speculative approaches. Else we argue that the potential for transforming dominant institutional logics remains limited due to "the enclosure of uncertainty": a drive within scientific institutions to reduce uncertainty for policy clarity in contrast to the increased uncertainty required and generated by art-science collaboration. Our study underscores the need for long-term, incremental adaptation in research and policymaking structures to integrate and institutionalize PNS practices, and thus SciArt.