Erik Fisher

About

Erik Fisher is an associate professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University. His work focuses on the politics and policy of science and technology, including the multi-level governance of emerging technologies from laboratory to legislative levels. Fisher builds upon historical and conceptual understandings of the evolving relationship between science and society, studying public policy demands and practitioner responses to interdisciplinary collaborations between science and the humanities aimed at enhancing societal responsiveness. He directs the Socio-Technical Integration Research (STIR) project and the STIR Cities project, which explore how interdisciplinary collaboration between scientific experts and embedded humanists can support responsible innovation across various sectors, including energy innovations in cities like Phoenix and Portland. Fisher's research demonstrates that integrating societal and ethical reflection into laboratory research on nanotechnology, synthetic biology, biotechnology, and neurotechnology can foster learning, deliberation, and practical adjustments. His conceptual framework of Midstream Modulation helps understand how technical decision-making can be broadened to incorporate public values and concerns. Fisher's contributions have significantly influenced the scholarly frameworks of Anticipatory Governance and Responsible Innovation.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Computer Security
• Engineering ethics
• Sociology
• Engineering
• Computer Science
• Data science
• Psychology
• Linguistics
• Biology

Selected publications

• From Affect to Action: Choices in Attending to Disconcertment in Interdisciplinary Collaborations

  Science Technology & Human Values · 2020-11-25 · 34 citations

  articleOpen access

  Reports from integrative researchers who have followed calls for sociotechnical integration emphasize that the potential of interdisciplinary collaboration to inflect the social shaping of technoscience is often constrained by their liminal position. Integrative researchers tend to be positioned as either adversarial outsiders or co-opted insiders. In an attempt to navigate these dynamics, we show that attending to affective disturbances can open up possibilities for productive engagements acros…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Reinventing responsible innovation

  Journal of Responsible Innovation · 2020 · 33 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  As we enter the third decade of the twenty-first century, ensuring that science, technology, development, and innovation are pursued responsibly will remain as challenging as before and undoubtedly...

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Responsible innovation scholarship: normative, empirical, theoretical, and engaged

  Journal of Responsible Innovation · 2024 · 31 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Digging Deeper into Precision/Personalized Medicine: Cracking the Sugar Code, the Third Alphabet of Life, and Sociomateriality of the Cell

  OMICS A Journal of Integrative Biology · 2020 · 27 citations

  Precision/personalized medicine is a hot topic in health care. Often presented with the motto “the right drug, for the right patient, at the right dose, and the right time,” precision medicine is a theory for rational therapeutics as well as practice to individualize health interventions (e.g., drugs, food, vaccines, medical devices, and exercise programs) using biomarkers. Yet, an alien visitor to planet Earth reading the contemporary textbooks on diagnostics might think precision medicine requ…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• RRI futures: ends and beginnings

  Journal of Responsible Innovation · 2021-05-04 · 7 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  ‘RRI is dead. Long live RRI!’1 With this intentionally provocative phrase, initial ideas began to circulate for what was to become this long-awaited special issue of the Journal of Responsible Inno...

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• STIR Cities: Engaging Expert Performances of Sociotechnical Imaginaries for the Smart Grid

  NSF · $325k · 2015–2019

• STIR: Socio-Technical Integration Research

  NSF · $543k · 2009–2014

Frequent coauthors

• Miklós Lukovics

  12 shared

• David H. Guston

  Institute for the Future

  10 shared

• Michael Reinsborough

  University of the West of England

  10 shared

• Roop L. Mahajan

  Virginia Tech

  9 shared

• Jennifer Richter

  8 shared

• Mareike Smolka

  RWTH Aachen University

  8 shared

• Mark Benassi

  University of Colorado System

  6 shared

• Philip Shapira

  6 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Environmental Studies

  University of Colorado-Boulder

  2006

• Other, Science and Technology Policy

  University of Colorado-Boulder

  2005

• M.A., Classics: Greek Philology

  University of Colorado-Boulder

  1995

• B.A., Philosophy and Mathematics

  St. John's College in Annapolis, MD

  1992

Similar researchers at Arizona State University

• Andrew Maynardh-51
• Itty Abrahamh-28