Public engagement in the tradition of participatory approaches - An approximation

Public engagement is viewed as a prominent aspect of responsible research and innovation (RRI) both in academia and policy circles. In our paper, we would like to contribute to refining the notion of public participation as an RRI element by assessing the potential of four domains of participatory R & I theory and practices that have to date received little recognition in the RRI context: 1. Participatory design, 2. user-led innovation, 3. participatory research and 4. systemic R & I policy instruments. We test the usefulness of our concepts with a set of case studies from a recent RRI research project.