Conference Program

Calls to embed responsible research and innovation (RRI) in science and engineering education emphasise the need to cultivate scientists capable of reflexive engagement with the societal dimensions of research and innovation. Yet doctoral training environments often struggle to translate these ambitions into concrete pedagogical and assessment practices. This paper examines an experiment in doctoral STEM education that introduces a deliberative democratic process—a citizens’ assembly—as a central component of assessment within a cohort-based PhD training programme.

The intervention takes place within two Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Centres for Doctoral Training (CDTs) at the University of Birmingham. These programmes bring together doctoral researchers from diverse disciplinary backgrounds but face a common challenge: ensuring that interdisciplinarity is experienced not merely as a structural feature of programmes but as a meaningful intellectual and civic practice. To address this, a module on responsible research and innovation integrates interdisciplinary perspectives with a transdisciplinary assessment in which doctoral researchers design and run their own citizens’ assemblies on controversial scientific topics.

Following a flipped-classroom learning experience involving contributions from scholars in law and history of science as well as external practitioners (including lawyers, entrepreneurs and industry collaborators), students organise assemblies structured around three phases: collective learning, expert engagement and deliberation, and the formulation of recommendations. Students identify topics, curate preparatory materials, recruit speakers and facilitate deliberation themselves. In doing so, they confront the ethical, political and societal dimensions of scientific research while experimenting with deliberative democratic formats typically absent from STEM training.

Drawing on five cohorts of doctoral researchers, we present survey data and qualitative evidence demonstrating how this assessment format reshapes students’ perceptions of their roles as scientists. Students consistently identify the citizens’ assembly as the most transformative component of the module, highlighting its capacity to surface plural perspectives, challenge disciplinary assumptions and foster critical reflection on research trajectories. Topics selected by students range across emerging technological and environmental controversies, providing a lens through which to analyse how scientists-in-training engage with contested futures.

We also explore higher-order effects extending beyond individual students. Evidence from interviews and programme observations suggests that the experience has influenced doctoral researchers’ behaviour in subsequent industrial internships, informed discussions within research groups, and shaped the thinking of CDT leadership and professional staff involved in doctoral training. These developments illustrate how democratic pedagogies can ripple outward through research cultures and institutional practices.

Finally, we reflect on the future development of such pedagogies. Current assemblies operate as internal educational simulations, raising questions about how and whether public participants should be integrated into assessed learning environments. Ongoing work exploring hybrid deliberative formats (including collaboration with initiatives such as the Tribunal for Future Generations) suggests possible pathways for connecting doctoral training more directly with public deliberation and stakeholder engagement. These developments open new possibilities for democratic forms of science education capable of reshaping both doctoral training and wider innovation cultures.