The roles of responsible innovation researchers in research projects

Journal article

The way in which responsible innovation (RI) is interpreted and implemented depends to a significant degree on how the researchers, scholars and practitioners who work on RI see their own work. Building on a long tradition of research on roles in research, there have been several contributions to the RI discourse suggesting distinctive roles that RI researchers may adopt. An understanding of these roles may help contextualise RI activities, including project dynamics, but also expected outputs and impacts of RI activities. In this article we present the findings of an empirical study of roles of RI researchers in research projects. The article presents the findings of an online survey collecting both quantitative and qualitative data on the roles that RI researchers assume. Its findings confirm that RI researchers assume some of the roles described in the literature. However, the data shows that some of the roles from the literature were not adopted and there were several additional roles not part of the literature. We propose a model that will allow for more detailed research on the factors that influence role choices of researchers.

Authors: Stahl, BC; Owoseni, A; Ten Holter, C

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Journal: Journal of Responsible Innovation
• Volume: 12
• Issue: 1
• Article number: 2466897
• Publication date: 2025-03-10
• Acceptance date: 2025-02-10
• DOI: 10.1080/23299460.2025.2466897
• EISSN: 2329-9037
• ISSN: 2329-9460
• Language: English
• Keywords: researcher role; responsible innovation; research projects; survey