Formal and Informal Infrastructures of Collaboration in the Human Brain Project

Abstract

This article draws on long-term engagement with the Human Brain Project (HBP), one of the Future and Emerging Technology Flagship Initiatives funded by the European Commission to address EU “grand challenges” of understanding the human brain and applying these insights to brain-inspired technology development. Based on participant observation and interviews with researchers and project administrators, our findings suggest that the formal infrastructure built to facilitate and structure collaboration within large-scale interdisciplinary research projects can be in tension with the ways researchers collaborate. While much of the literature on infrastructure focuses on top-down, formal infrastructural design, we also pay attention to the informal, bottom-up infrastructural assemblage involved in large-scale interdisciplinary collaborations. This brings into question how scientists and science funders navigate the tensions and interactions between formal and informal infrastructure, rendering certain kinds of collaboration and knowledge (in)visible.

Building a responsible innovation toolkit as project legacy

“…The RRI-related research undertaken within the project has led to a string of publications covering attempts to identify and categorize the relevant issues (Christen et al, 2016 ) and description of the general approach and organization of RRI (Salles et al, 2019a ; Stahl et al, 2019 ) as well as work on specific topics and issues, such as neuroethics (Evers, 2016 ; Salles et al, 2019b ) or dual use (Ulnicane et al, 2022 ). We have published a number of articles aiming to provide insights into our approach to RRI and possible weaknesses and future ways forward (Aicardi et al, 2018 ; Mahfoud, 2021 ; Stahl et al, 2021 ; Aicardi and Mahfoud, 2022 ). As all this work is well-documented, we do not wish to revisit the detail but focus on the question of what will become of it after the project finishes.…”

Flagship Afterthoughts: Could the Human Brain Project (HBP) Have Done Better?

“…Attracting and sustaining collaborations has been at the heart of the open calls of HBP (Lorents et al, 2023). Despite these efforts, monitored by ethnographic studies in social sciences (Mahfoud, 2018(Mahfoud, , 2021Aicardi and Mahfoud, 2022;Rüland, 2023), it remains unclear at the end of the project what type of community has emerged or been consolidated. To my knowledge, no quantitative independent social network study has been yet made, looking at the full longitudinal history of the HBP flagship, to analyze (1) the evolution of collaborative networks (to illustrate for instance a possible revitalization by open calls) and (2) the interpenetration of the different scientific fields.…”

Lessons from the 'Dark' Side

“…But how do participants in cross-sectoral collaborations experience the endeavour? Despite a long history of collaborative inter-and trans-disciplinary research in various interrelated fields such as responsible research and innovation (RRI) studies (Dupret et al, 2022), organisation studies (Farchi et al, 2023), science studies (Aicardi and Mahfoud, 2022), social entrepreneurship and innovation studies (Kosmynin, 2022), participatory design (e.g., Bratteteig and Wagner, 2016), etc., key aspects of cross-sectoral research remain underexplored. Much of the literature on this topic focuses on how important it is to ensure that the perspectives and worldviews of stakeholders are considered when creating social innovation, interventions and design 'leaving no one behind' (e.g., Dupret, 2023).…”