Futuring Biological Commons is a project funded by the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA). Part of ARIA’s ambitious Synthetic Plants programme—which aims to catalyse scientific progress and foster new communities and industries—Futuring Biological Commons seeks to advance the UK’s governance of scientifically enhanced plants. The project supports the development of a sustainable research and industrial ecosystem while promoting meaningful public deliberation.
To achieve this, it employs a ‘pendulum futuring’ methodology and a relational ‘commoning’ approach to develop actionable strategies for inclusive and socially just innovation. The project also contributes to a forward-looking, empirically grounded plant ethics—one that embraces care for techno-lifeforms and ‘symbiodiversity’—ensuring the UK retains global leadership in socio-ethically robust life science innovation.
Between 2025 and 2028, the project will conduct empirical research across the UK and host a series of public-facing events. We warmly welcome scientific practitioners at all career stages, as well as those from industry, farming, environmental sectors, and interested members of the public, to contact us with your ideas, questions, or concerns.
This transdisciplinary team is led by Professor Joy Y. Zhang and is hosted by the Centre for Global Science and Epistemic Justice (GSEJ) at the University of Kent. The project contributes to GSEJ’s initiative to promote a new ‘Odyssey’ (O.D.E.SS.I) of science-society dialogue—an approach that is Open, Deliberative, Enabling, Sensible & Sensitive, and Innovative—to help coordinate diverse aspirations and collective actions around scientific potential.
Contact the project: FuturingCommons@kent.ac.uk; Research Centre: GSEJ@kent.ac.uk
Follow us on bluesky: @gsej.bsky.social X: @CentreEpistemic
