4th International Seville Conference on Future-Oriented Technology Analysis: Call for abstracts
06 Oct 2010. The Joint Research Centre Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (JRC-IPTS) of the European Commission is pleased to announce the 4th edition of the International Seville Conference on Future-Oriented Technology Analysis (FTA).
The conference will be held on Thursday 12 and Friday 13 May 2011 at JRC-IPTS, Seville, Spain. The focus of the conference is on the need and potential of FTA to address disruptive transformations in response to grand societal challenges. FTA offers policy and decision makers the potential to look across disruptive transformations, enabling governments and other organisations to become more adaptive and capable of enacting systemic change. Hence, FTA has a potentially useful role to play in enabling a better understanding of the complex systems which interact in each situation and in defining effective policy responses. Innovation is both a source of and possible key response to disruptive transformations. FTA can contribute not only to the steering of innovation systems, but also to their adjustment, adaptability and ability to shape responses to challenges and transformations. At the same time, FTA can contribute to building absorptive capacities that allow organisations to become more adaptive and capable of anticipating and addressing continuous as well as disruptive change through institutionalised and embedded FTA. Finally, appropriate FTA premises and practices are essential requirements to enable FTA to fulfil such roles, and should be supported by appropriate combinations of quantitative and qualitative methods. In this context, 2011 FTA Conference addresses the following specific themes: • Orienting innovation systems towards global challenges and the roles that FTA can play • Building FTA capacities for systemic and structural transformations • Premises and practices in combining quantitative and qualitative FTA methods Full call for abstracts download The deadline for submitting abstracts is Tuesday 23 November 2010. Authors will be informed by 7 December 2010 whether their abstracts have been accepted. Full text of papers and posters as well as presentations are to be submitted no later than 5 April 2011. A pre-conference online survey will also be launched before the end of December 2010 to enable interested participants to share ideas and explore future emerging issues. Results will be discussed during the conference. We look forward to your contribution and participation in this event. Please forward this call to colleagues of yours that might have an interest in contributing to the 2011 FTA Conference. Please use the following e-mail address for any inquiry you might have: jrc-ipts-foresight@ec.europa.eu