Training: Foresight and anticipation of social & ethical issues - HBP

External Event - 21st Apr 2022

Time: 12pm (GMT) 

Online Event

The Human Brain Project’s Capacity Development Committee works to provide researchers who are using the EBRAINS research infrastructure or who work within the Human Brain Project with the skills needed to identify and address ethical, legal, and societal issues that arise from brain research. Enabling a responsible research and innovation culture within the Human Brain Project, EBRAINS, and the neuroscience community: Raising awareness of the need to anticipate and deliberate on issues regarding responsibility through engaging with the public. This includes providing tools and methods for foresight as well as critical and philosophical reflection.
 
Foresight, the ability to anticipate possible future developments and plan your actions based on this knowledge, is key to developing research in societally desirable directions. 
 
The module is a 1/2 day workshop format that consists of a mixture of lectures and practical exercises. Participants are first introduced to foresight theory in RRI as well as neuroethical and societal issues. Thereafter, they are presented with cases and examples of possible long-term societal and ethical implications of brain research and an overview of approaches to anticipate these issues and implications.

Through practical exercises, the participants will learn how to systematically think through future societal implications of neuroscience and of their own scientific work by working hands-on with a foresight tool (developed as part of the RRI toolkit for EBRAINS) and by developing future neuroscience scenarios.