This paper is one result of a project funded by VINNOVA (the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems) in connection with the call for proposals “Gender perspectives on innovation systems and gender equality – research and development projects for sustainable growth”. The product of the project is the process itself. This process enabled synergy effects through local and regional agreement on strategies and practices for sustainable innovation systems also providing equal opportunities. The paper aims to demonstrate the potentials and experiences feminist research can offer regarding mainstreaming knowledge and policy production within domains dominated by technoscience. It is the very act of working on integration that requires and stimulates development of other theoretical perspectives and methodological ways of relating.
This project report provides an interesting bundle of ideas which I presume will be of relevance to colleagues in quite varying fields. Open access contributions make recommendations travel fast, mine travelled immediately to four different colleagues who do not know each other, so that is a very good quota already, I should say
What caught my interest most was the idea – spelled out! – that metacommunication is an important factor in processes of change . I would be keen to learn more about whether the authors think this may be particularly pertinent when attempting convergence work for knowledge production and policy production , and why they think this might be true (or not). In my experience at least, metacommunication often is the crucial point where insights from queer-feminist ways of discussing the „how-shall-we-communicate-s“ (inclusions/exclusions etc.) can be fruitful. I wonder what might be learnt from your project in this respect and in more detail?
A reader who is neither familiar with this country nor with this area, but is considering this formidable Blekinge initiative as a model, might wish to have a few more data (e.g. on the topographical character, the difference with respect to the neighbouring regions, the number of inhabitants, the gross regional product/ average income per capita, transport infrastructure, distances between the three BTH campuses etc.) to draw quick comparisons to other regions → what exactly are the „qualities specific to this region“ ? This might be of particular interest for similar projects-to-be in the Southern Baltic coastal areas (of which there are many different types, also culturally).
Such an additional piece of information might be placed well in the introduction, maybe together with a mention, right here, of who was involved in the project . Actually, I got a bit confused by the information given in the introduction. I guess it might need more explicitness for a short preview of what is following in which parts (I finally decided on three: , , ). While for me it was exciting to learn anew that a process may be a product , I got lost about the study/studies mentioned: „The study“ , „the pilot study“ , „the short study“ ; maybe what I figured out as the third part (on the EU) is not mentioned yet at all and that accounts for my confusion, too?
I would like to suggest using the contested concept of „European“ more carefully throughout this essay and especially in . Europe is much larger than the EU. This is what I would call a tricky political issue created and maintained by EU nomenclature (not to say ideology) of dominance and exclusion (cf. what Traweek in is quoted to say of the „voice“ of „science“). While „European research policy“ seems to mean all of Europe – which is not true since some European countries, e.g. Belarus, do not really have a say in this at all –, this is not precise either if we take the ERA, or FP7 associated countries, which include Israel, or yet FP7 international „third party“ states including African cooperation partners. So I think saying „EU research policy“ might hit the point better.
The conclusion does not seem to match the length of the article and might be reworked into a point-by-point summary for each chapter. Here it would be helpful to read in a nutshell how exactly the aim „to demonstrate the potentials … feminist research can offer“ has been attained in this project. I would particularly welcome a brief passage on how a focus on an innovation system can contribute to „develop theory and practise within feminist technoscience“ (purpose no. 2 in ).
While this may be a matter of taste, I would prefer to have more hyperlinks to follow immediately for reference or explanation (e.g. Vinnväxt , „in a specific article published“ , nutek , Jämit ). This also helps make visible other relevant sources which are available open access (unless the links points to an English language site, it would be great to have a language indication going with the link).
While this, too, may be a matter of taste, I would like to close by saying that I guess the issues raised in all three parts would benefit from being focussed more radically, maybe in a conceptual framework structure, i.e. more independent of the actual project’s setup. This could be done by using instances from the project’s working experience to illustrate a given conceptual point. Maybe this would help transform the project report so as to give the reader a (more) coherent flow of arguments to mull over for their own subsequent reworking – into an IJFT article-for-open-review-to-be
Thanks to your detailed article, I now think I see much clearer about just how much excellent feminist work on processes of change is needed before an open access open review journal like IJFT can even begin to look for a software which would be suitable to use and adapt. Congratulations!