Matjaz Vidmar

The University of Edinburgh | UoE · Institute for the Study of Science and Technology (ISSTI)

Open Prototyping is a design approach and process to imagine, navigate and shape co-creation projects. It offers a way to bridge disciplinary viewpoints and connect to communities in the real world through experiential prototypes. It enables teams to design, structure and evaluate collaborative R&D, and address urgent challenges through participato...

Experiential artificial intelligence (AI) is an approach to the design, use, and evaluation of AI in cultural or other real-world settings that foregrounds human experience and context. It combines arts and engineering to support rich and intuitive modes of model interpretation and interaction, making AI tangible and explicit. The ambition is to en...

Background: As the SARS-CoV-2 virus created a global pandemic and rapidly became an imminent threat to the health and lives of people worldwide, the need for a vaccine and its quick distribution among the population was evident. Due to the urgency, and on the back of international collaboration, vaccines were developed rapidly. However, vaccination...

A short summary of our research interests and promising directions for future work in The New Real.

Even before the explosion of Generative AI in 2022 and 2023, the landscape of artistic uses of AI technologies in the creation, curation and consumption of digital and hybrid experiences was already dynamic and diverse.

A taster summary of our FAccT 2023 paper in Chicago. Strategies developed within the critical art community – before and since the arrival of powerful new generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Midjourney – can help to enrich the public conversation on AI and equip practitioners to respond to the fast paced developments in the field.

Experiential AI is an emerging research field that addresses the challenge of making AI tangible and explicit, both to fuel cultural experiences for audiences, and to make AI systems more accessible to human understanding. The central theme is how artists, scientists and other interdisciplinary actors can come together to understand and communicate...

Experiential AI is presented as a research agenda in which scientists and artists come together to investigate the entanglements between humans and machines, and an approach to human-machine learning and development where knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. The paper discusses advances and limitations in the field of expl...

What freedoms can people expect in space and how will governance beyond Earth tread the fine line between authority and liberty? In this multi-author book, the contributors consider all aspects of liberty beyond Earth, from the near term: freedom to claim satellite orbits, to the very long-term: freedom on interstellar worldships. Liberty in societ...

What freedoms can people expect in space and how will governance beyond Earth tread the fine line between authority and liberty? In this multi-author book, the contributors consider all aspects of liberty beyond Earth, from the near term: freedom to claim satellite orbits, to the very long-term: freedom on interstellar worldships. Liberty in societ...

BACKGROUND Vaccination has been successful tool in the fight against infectious diseases for a long time. Since SARS-CoV-2 virus created global pandemic and has become imminent threat to health and lives of people, the need for creation of vaccine and its implementation among population was evident. Due to the urgent matter and joint forces of expe...

Current up-to-date programme for the 2022 Inaugural Forming and Exploring Habitable Worlds Meeting, University of Edinburgh, UK. This interdisciplinary conference is bringing people together from a range of disciplines during the week beginning November 7th 2022. Over 80 exciting abstracts! Looking forward to the event!

Based on the growing importance of place-based strategic intelligence, this article puts forward a conceptual framework for a new methodological approach to influence the shaping of subnational economic development. The novel Opportunity Areas Analysis Tool has been designed and deployed in the context of a City Region Deal in Scotland, UK. We defi...

Open Access resource available for research purposes. The data collected in this dataset are narratives exploring public policies, attitudes, individual behaviors, and the collective experiences of the involved communities regarding vaccination during the COVID-19 pandemic. The narratives were written by the members of the interdisciplinary resear...

Wearing face masks is recommended as part of personal protective equipment and as a public health measure to prevent the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Their use, however, is deeply connected to social and cultural practices and has acquired a variety of personal and social meanings. This article aims to identify the divers...

It identifies the alignment of interests between the University DDI Programme and key private and public organisations in Fife; and, it evaluates options, recommending potential next steps. We identify specific opportunity areas for DDI activities across the eight key sectors identified in the Fife Economic Strategy 2017-2027 (i.e. energy and ren...

This chapter outlines the implications of the proposed new model of innovation intermediation for further research, as well as proposes tools and approaches to implementing its insights in practice. The latter covers both macro-level policymaking as well as developing specific innovation intermediaries and interventions. Based on work with Innovati...

This chapter provides an overview of the evolving definition of what is an innovation intermediary and proposes its further extension to address the challenges of fragmentation of roles and activities of these organisations. In particular, it extends the core definition of innovation intermediation to cover activities beyond the multi-party (knowle...

This chapter re-examines the case of innovation intermediaries in the emerging New Space sector in peripheral countries. It starts with two comparative studies of two innovation intermediaries, one in Scotland and one in Slovenia, with reference to the innovation policy context. Starting from a comparable investment and relatively similar environme...

This chapter argues that closer examination of interventions, rather than organisational roles, is necessary to address issues with the operationalisation of state-of-the-art insights. It proposes a two-step solution—a new (re-)classification of all available interventions based on comprehensive literature review and then the development of a relat...

This chapter presents the empirical case study of the macro-level landscape and micro-level roles and activities of innovation intermediaries in the emergent New Space sector in Scotland. This is based on a mix of industrial/innovation policy document analysis, social-network mapping and case studies with survey data. The wealth of thus collected e...

This conclusion summarises the main findings and arguments presented in this book and reiterates the need for a comprehensive understanding of innovation intermediaries’ interventions and their roles in innovation processes and in policymaking. It further proposes some policy directions for the studied context, the New Space sector in peripheral co...

The data collected in this dataset are narratives exploring public policies, attitudes, individual behaviors, and the collective experiences of the affected communities regarding face mask wearing at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The narratives were written by the members of the interdisciplinary research network Navigating Knowledge Landscap...

As the COVID-19 pandemic devastated social and economic fabric of most countries, high-growth small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) were looked upon to provide the starting point for eventual recovery. This is based on the growing notion of resilience being driven by both entrepreneurial agility as well as strategic planning capacity, giving ris...

Social scientific research of the related disciplines of Astronomy and Space Science, Exploration and Industry has already emerged early in the history of Science and Technology Studies (STS). In fact, one of the first monographs specialising in a sociology of a scientific discipline presented a detailed study of the development of Radio Astronomy...

Innovation intermediaries are seen as crucial and critical players in the development of emergent high-tech sectors, though the understanding of their activities is not yet holistic and depends on geographical and sectoral specificities. This paper empirically deploys a recently developed classification within a case study of the New Space sector i...

The global Space Industry's transition to New Space—that is, smaller and cheaper hardware and more easily accessible space data—is expanding space-related economic activity into new, peripheral geographical areas. This paradigm shift has been particularly successful in establishing a budding ecosystem of small-to-medium-sized enterprises in Scotlan...

This book synthesizes the critical advances in holistic understanding of innovation intermediation. It aims to enable researchers, policy-makers, analysts and practitioners to understand and exploit the best practice in designing and deploying interventions in support of an emergent high-tech geographically-bound sectoral innovation system. The boo...

Smart Specialization Strategy (S3) has become a dominant regional economic development field with significant policy traction, in particular within the European Union. However, questions are being raised about its operationalization and a gap has been identified with respect to the role of innovation intermediaries’ interventions in support of the...

This paper outlines a series of observations about how public discourse is framed regarding the way risk assessment is conceived at the cutting edge of developing the scientific and technological frontier. Examining the newly emerging narratives concerning the future of outer space exploration and industry, particularly human missions to and settle...

NASA's plans for a Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway (LOP-G), also known as "Deep Space Gateway" (DSD) in cis-lunar orbit have attracted a lot of attention across the industry over the past few years. However, its ever-changing conception from a staging-post for human missions to Mars, to a facilitating architecture for a renewed presence on the lunar...

This paper is building a detailed understanding of the organisational structures and practices in SMEs' knowledge absorption from a network of innovation partners. In particular, it explores the relationship between the openness of innovation process through innovation networks and the development of organisational structures within firms, as well...

This Innovating STS Exhibit will be an interactive gallery of posters that present themes from the work of a new network of scholars engaged in critical STS work on outer space science and technology. Organized under the rubric Social Studies of Outer Space (Messeri 2016), this network includes sociologists, anthropologists, historians and cultural...

Entrepreneurs have been increasingly benefitting from the support of HEIs. The latter can help faculty in their ventures by providing them with information, specific training, funding, working space, etc. The entrepreneurial and innovative HEI can promote entrepreneurship in its ecosystem, thus promoting inclusive growth. In Romania, HEIs struggle...

The global space industry has recently seen a structural transformation through the emergence of ‘New Space’, i.e., a significant expansion of the development of smaller, cheaper, and more modular space-related products in services. One example of this expansion is the emergence of a world-leading cluster of New Space industry in Scotland (UK). Cri...

This report, developed under the ESRC Impact Acceleration Award, characterises the main features of the Edinburgh Living Lab methodological approach and outlines its structural opportunities within the context of the emerging Data-Driven Innovation programme.

This briefing note outlines a basic typology to assist Catapults in defining the key characteristics and requirements behind the various mechanisms which they deploy in the innovation ecosystem. This is related to the previously proposed framework of innovation support mechanisms (see Briefing Note 1). In the development of strategic plans to suppo...

This briefing note provides a basic framework to assist Catapults in identifying and measuring the various mechanisms through which they add value and support innovation, by acting as a catalyst for innovation through creating and deploying resources and delivering activities. In the wake of the new cycle of the Industrial Strategy, there is a furt...

With ever increasing importance of innovation intermediaries in the analysis of (open) innovation systems, the current state-of-the-art literature is being challenged by a lack of theoretical and operational clarity, as seen in incomplete, overly complex and dysfunctional classifications. Furthermore, demand is growing for straight answers to pract...

Appraisals of regeneration have previously focused on the benefits such schemes bring, rather than also looking at costs and risks. Here Dr Julia Kasmire and Matjaz Vidmar use Glasgow as a case study to ask who stands to benefit the most from regeneration. http://blog.policy.manchester.ac.uk/posts/2018/01/whats-not-to-like-about-regeneration/

Gateway Earth Development Group is an initiative proposing new modular space access architecture, centred on operating a combined research space station and commercial space hotel in the geostationary orbit (GEO) – the Gateway Earth complex. At this location, robotic and crewed interplanetary spacecraft could be assembled, and docked before they tr...

Gateway Earth is proposed as modular space access architecture, operating a combined governmental space station and commercial space hotel located in the geostationary orbit [1, 2]. This location, close to the edge of the Earth's "gravity well", is ideal for robotic and crewed interplanetary spacecraft to dock as they depart for, or return from, an...

Gateway Earth Development Group seeks to design a technically and economically viable architecture for interplanetary space exploration. We are proposing to utilise space tourism as an enabler for the development of a space station in Earth’s geostationary orbit (GEO), at which interplanetary spacecraft could be build and serviced to take astronaut...

Key extract from the pilot study; readied for The Proceedings of Reinventing Space conference. ABSTRACT: This paper is outlining a pilot attempt to systematically study the relationship between the systemic macro level (Malerba, 2002; 2005) and processual micro level (Pavitt, 2003) of innovation process in a high-tech industry (such as Space); and...

Though (regional) economic development based on innovation clusters and regional systems of innovation is gaining prominence throughout the EU, (public) funding institutions are still reluctant to provide development guidelines to the ecosystems they help to develop. In this essay, I examine a small set of case studies to illustrate this trend and...

This study analysed the impact of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) to the UK and the underlying reasons for its success. This was done using impact evaluation methodology (RCUK, 2007; 2011) and innovation systems framework as the theoretical platform, with three key components: knowledge flows, network of agents and institution...

This project is about examining, developing and calibrating a small spectral observatory, made of a 4'' refracting telescope linked to a spectrometer via a single core plastic optical fibre. The spectrum was recorded using a CCD detector. In the process of upgrade, fibre connectors and a new mounting plate were installed as well as necessary image...

As part of the Physics curriculum reform following the principles of Curriculum for Excellence, a redevelopment of the Space part, from the S3 Dynamics and Space unit was undertaken at Auchmuty High School, Glenrothes, Fife. The unit was renamed “S3 Astronomy: Exploring the Universe” and covers all required high school Astronomy topics. This new cu...