This thesis is an investigation into the staging and negotiation of technologically responsible futures through Technology Assessment and Responsible Research and Innovation. Science, technology and Innovation are major co-producers of the ways we live our lives, our perception of what is possible and the way we reflect on our actions. This relation; between the responsibility of human sociotechnical ingenuity and the radical changes to the environmental dimensions of the planet, has been proposed

My research is occupied with investigating how different visions of responsible development of science, technology and innovation is being negotiated through practices of Technology Assessment and Responsible Research and Innovation.

Technology Assessment and Responsible Research and Innovation are inter- or transdisciplinary practices of analysis, which seek to provide guidance for decision-makers about science, technology and innovation. The application and content of these practices have changed from its reactive origin in the midst of the 20th century, to presently being used as design practices with science, technology and innovation in the co-production of pathways to responsible imaginary futures. Because they are being used to shape our sociotechnical future it is important to understand how these methods are being formed by our sociotechnical present.

With this objective, my research has been performed as an explorative process of following the negotiations of defining responsibility through multiple sites; the Danish Board of Technology, in the Council of Coaches project and in the funding program horizon 2020 developed by the European Commission. The multiple sites are entangled in their ambition to develop responsible sociotechnical futures, but just what this means differs between them.

Because of this, there is a continuous negotiation and aligning/re-aligning of stakeholders and stakes. These are stagings of ontological choreography, mobilising around particular issues and neither passive nor objective in themselves. Technology Assessment and Responsible Research and Innovation are to this extent situated and mediating particular ontological and ethical positions. The performative nature of this kind of knowledge-making is tightly linked if not inseparable to sociotechnical subjectivities of the participating parts. To this extent, the thesis explores how the practices of Technology Assessment and Responsible Research and Innovation act as mediators, and how the negotiation of dominating visions occur.