Public engagement with science is a firm policy priority in the UK Higher Education sector. What is less well articulated is why we put so much resource into this kind of activity and who is supposed to benefit. I will start this session with a provocation: if the most disempowered parts of society do not directly benefit from public engagement - and within an appropriate timeframe - then what exactly is its purpose and what is the rationale that allows it to be funded in place of any other public policy intervention?

As its focal point this seminar will draw on research conducted across Scotland looking at how the Scottish public have been engaged to facilitate a transition to a low-carbon economy. It looks broadly at this important, active and topical area of technology policy and asks whether/how it is supported by an agenda for public engagement being fiercely resourced and emphasised by policymakers. Touching on a wide range of mechanisms for engaging the public, I will introduce and critically develop the idea of "scientific citizenship" as a contrast to "public engagement", asking what it might look like in practice, what its core contribution could be and what is inferred for the role of the University. In doing this, I will unpack the commonly-held idea that a transition from "public understanding" to "dialogue" represents a fundamental shift enabling citizenship, as if this were the gold standard of participation. Indeed, we see a rise in dialogic activity not just around formal and informal policy but from practitioners, for example in science centres and festivals. At this juncture, I will go on to highlight three further capacities in which citizens can assert their character: as consumers, as co-makers of knowledge and as counterpublics.

In doing this, the audience will be challenged to a broad discussion considering the role played by a variety of science-public intermediaries in facilitating scientific citizenship. What sort of topics do intermediaries address? Should intermediaries focus on the general or the specific? Should public engagement facilitate policy priorities? How does this choice limit their contribution? When do they become active? What forms of participation are used? How is the public imagined and mobilised? What rights and responsibilities do/can they have? What are the overlaps between public engagement and scientific citizenship? How do they differ?  Although these are big questions, I argue that only by tackling them head-on can we maximise the potential of public engagement to leverage the best societal returns from public investment in science, technology, engineering and maths.