This is the personal website of René von Schomberg, philosopher and science and technology studies scholar. I write about Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), the ethics of emerging technologies, Open Science, and the use of knowledge in policy-making.
I worked at the European Commission from 1998 to 2021, where I helped introduce Responsible Research and Innovation into EU research policy. I am now a Senior Research Fellow at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg “Cultures of Research” at RWTH Aachen University and a Guest Professor at the Technical University of Darmstadt. I hold PhDs in Science and Technology Studies (University of Twente) and Philosophy (J.W. Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main), and I am author or co-editor of 15 books, including the International Handbook on Responsible Innovation: A Global Resource (Edward Elgar, 2019). More about me and how to get in touch.
Responsible Research and Innovation
- Definition of Responsible Innovation: the widely cited definition of RRI as a transparent, interactive process between societal actors and innovators
- Why Responsible Innovation?: six deficits of the global research and innovation system
- Implementing Responsible Research and Innovation: the RRI matrix of product and process dimensions
- Institutional Change for Responsible Research and Innovation
- From ‘Responsible Development of Technologies’ to Responsible Innovation
- Challenges for Responsible Innovation and interviews on the origin and prospects of RRI
- International Handbook on Responsible Innovation
Ethics, governance and science-for-policy
- Ethics of Co-responsibility: organising collective responsibility for socio-technological change
- The Precautionary Principle: definition
- Knowledge Assessment and Foresight and Knowledge and Action
- Global Governance of Science and Innovation
- Emerging technologies, philosophy and public debate, including nanotechnology and ICT and security technologies
Open Science and Citizen Science
Publications
See my list of publications and my ORCID profile.
Latest posts
- The Moral Crisis of the Universities: Restoring Knowledge Production for the Public Good
- Open, Responsible Research and Innovation Principles
- Watering Down of Responsible Innovation under Horizon Europe (2028–2034)
- Responsible Research and Innovation-Labs: towards new forms of reflexivity in engineering and innovation practices
- Advancing Open, Responsible Research and Innovation: Recommendations
This website is managed and written in a personal capacity.
