Innovation Residues
Modes and Infrastructures of Caring for our Longue-durée Environmental Futures
studies the left-behinds of major fields of innovation, which impact the environment and our lives. It investigates how European innovation societies conceptualise, make sense of, live with, and care for these innovation residues, and how this shapes their relations to innovation.
About INNORES
Today, as technological innovations are seen as foundational to the future development of contemporary societies, the entanglements of innovation and society require closer scrutiny more than ever. INNORES offers a novel, empirically and theoretically rich approach to do so through a radically switched perspective. It does not put innovations themselves centre-stage, assigning to residues the role of potentially disruptive side-effects, but takes residues as the lens to study democratic innovation societies. It investigates how societies conceptualise, make sense of, live with, and care for innovation residues, and how this shapes their relations to innovation. Studying innovation societies through the complex networks and manifestations of residues, INNORES opens up new perspectives on how local choices and global impacts relate, on intergenerational justice and responsibility, on whose future imaginaries, values, and knowledges count when making choices, on how benefits and risks are distributed, and on modes and infrastructures of care for environmental futures.
Cross-cutting research, conceptual and methodological developments
INNORES is deeply committed to analytically curated comparison within and across the three fields of innovation – nuclear, digital and plastics – tracing heterogeneities, similarities, and differences when it comes to the generation of enduring residues, the modes and infrastructures of caring for them put in place and the imagined environmental futures this creates. In studying innovations through their residues, the project is methodologically committed to developing a comparative assemblage ethnography, combining diverse sets of empirical data from fieldwork, conferences, interviews, discussion groups, media and policy documents. It is also invested in creating space for voices of citizens and for different public contestations. We are thus interested in investigating frictions, alignments, and exclusions to better understand how diverse societal actors negotiate the place of innovation in contemporary societies through the lens of residues.
Nuclear Waste
Nuclear waste is in many ways the icon for residues that bring complex longue-term environmental futures with them. Promises that technical fixes will solve the problem have been circulating for three quarters of a century. There is a rich body of literature on aspects such as protests, trust and participation around nuclear waste facilities, or regulatory efforts.
Microplastic
Microplastics designate small plastic pieces entering the environment either as fibres, microbeads, or fragments of larger plastics. They are the residue of a technological innovation – plastic – that fundamentally transformed our lives. While first reports on microlastic in our oceans already appeared in the 1970ies, the notion of microplastics was only coined in 2004 and gradually became a matter of concern.
Data Waste
Data waste/waisting is a new category of residue created through digital innovations which INNORES wants to reflect on as a not-yet-fully acknowledged problem, a quasi-absence in carefully thinking about the consequential materiality of data, e.g., the potential impact of omnipresent big data visions and the extractive systems by which data are made valuable.
Latest news & events
Three new MA thesis related to the INNORES project
Inge Maas opened the series of MA thesis presentations with her work, “(Re)framing Sustainability in National AI Strategies: Austria, France and Ireland.” Examining the national AI strategies of Austria, France, and Ireland, she shows how sustainability is strategically reframed to reconcile the environmental costs of AI with the EU’s Twin Transition agenda, primarily through narratives of efficiency, selective visibility, and promises of future technological solutions.
She was followed by Pablo Valenzuela Astudillo, who presented “Unveiling Technoscientific Promises: The Arrival of a Hyperscale Data Centre in Talavera de la Reina (Spain).” Through a case study of a proposed hyperscale data centre in Talavera de la Reina, he analyses how promissory regimes and logics of scalability mobilise local support for digital infrastructures, while activists and residents negotiate, contest, and rework the futures these projects seek to install.
Finally, Roxana Demeter presented “Towards Long-Term Nuclear Waste Governance: Future-Making at the Centre de Stockage de la Manche and the Bois Noirs Limouzat Mine.” Challenging the assumption that low-level nuclear residues constitute a solved governance problem, she examines how actors at two legacy nuclear sites in France engage in practices of future-making that shape responsibility, memory, valuation, and governance across extended temporal horizons.
It is wonderful to see such excellent research emerging from the INNORES project and to witness how these three theses advance its core concerns from distinct yet complementary perspectives.
Workshop with Prof. Stephen Hilgartner
From April 10 to April 22, we had the pleasure of welcoming Stephen Hilgartner as a visiting scholar to the INNORES project. His stay provided an invaluable opportunity for intensive exchanges with the project team on a wide range of themes central to our research. Over nearly two weeks of discussions, workshops, and informal conversations, we explored different facets of innovation residues, from questions of long-term responsibility and care to issues of knowledge production, governance, and future-making. Stephen’s insightful comments, critical engagement, and longstanding expertise in STS helped sharpen our thinking and opened up new perspectives for the project’s ongoing work. The visit was marked by a spirit of intellectual curiosity and collaboration, leaving us with many ideas to pursue in the months ahead. We are deeply grateful for this stimulating exchange and look forward to continuing the conversation.
Retreat with the INNORES team 22-24 September 2025
Our team, Ulrike Felt, Carsten Horn, Noah Münster, Ange Pottin and Livia Regen, spent three great days together to advance our thinking in the INNORES project. It was in so many ways incredibly productive, grounded in genuine collegiality and curiosity. We tackled core, cross-cutting questions that bridged our different ideas and opened new paths forward. It was a real treat to share unhurried time for thinking together—proof that collective reflection powers is great.