O.D.E.SS.I. and BioDiploEthics
O.D.E.SS.I. (Open, Deliberative, Enabling, Sensible & Sensitive, and the ‘I’ in We) is an approach to science–society dialogue developed at the Centre for Global Science and Epistemic Justice. It responds to a growing challenge: science increasingly crosses borders, while the values, interests and institutions shaping its development remain diverse.
O.D.E.SS.I. is also an ongoing research programme that brings together a number of projects hosted by GSEJ, focusing on the emerging socio-ethical and ecological implications of engineering biology in environmental, medical, and agricultural contexts, providing a space to develop and test new research methods and undertake conceptual and empirical experiments in science–society relations.
O.D.E.SS.I. sits at the intersection of bioethics, public engagement and diplomacy—a space we call ‘biodiploethics’. The idea brings together three roots: bios (life), diplo- (diplomacy and mediation) and ethos (the values and ways of living that hold communities together). Bios encompasses human, non-human and emerging techno-biological forms of life. Crucially, biodiploethics is not concerned with the ethics of life, but with how forms of life themselves constitute ethics. Ethics (ethos) here is not a set of external constraints but a generative practice through which shared forms of life are negotiated and sustained. This ethical constitution is achieved through diplomacy (diplo-), understood not as statecraft but as a cultivated sensibility and a practice of mediation capable of forging a shared ethos across difference.
Biodiploethics therefore shifts the goal from finding a single ‘right’ position to building the relationships and capacities through which different positions can be articulated, contested and negotiated. O.D.E.SS.I. puts this into practice. It seeks neither consensus for its own sake nor public acceptance of predetermined scientific pathways, but greater mutual intelligibility across differences and, where possible, differentiated but coordinated action.
The O.D.E.SS.I. journey so far-
April 2025 – publication of the O.D.E.SS.I. concept paper.
September 2025 – London kick off meeting [conference report here]
November 2025 – the O.D.E.SS.I. session at the iGEM Responsibility Conference in Paris (see pp. 42-47)
May 2026 – Contributing to UN STI Forum Side Event
July 2026 –ODESSI in Southeast Asia
September 2026 – The launch of the EARS Vision Paper, a new O.D.E.SS.I. experiment
*coming up: November 2026 – O.D.E.SS.I. and Synthetic Genomics conference in Canterbury