Giovanni De Grandis

University College London, Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy (STEaPP), Post-Doc

NTNU, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Senior radgiver

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I am a philosopher by training, specialized in Political Philosophy, Ethics and applied Ethics. I was educated at the University of Torino (laurea cum laude and PhD) and at University College London (MA with distinction).
After my PhD in 2004, I moved to the UK, where I have been teaching philosophy (especially Ethics and Political Philosophy), political theory and more for various higher education institutions, including St Clare's Oxford, the Department for Continuing Education of the University of Oxford, University College London, London Metropolitan University.
From 2012 I have hold various postdoctoral and research positions at the University of Copenhagen, at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, and at University College London. My research has spanned across diverse topics like digital publishing and digital repositories, to public health, urban planning, personalised medicine and pharmaceutical regulations, and Responsible Research and Innovation.
Supervisors: Laurea dissertation supervisor: prof Pier Paolo Portinaro (Università di Torino), MA dissertation supervisor: Prof James Wilson (UCL), and PhD supervisor: prof Carlo Augusto Viano (Università di Torino).

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Papers by Giovanni De Grandis

Extended Stakeholder Mapping of the Implementing Institutions. ETHNA System Project – Deliverable 5.2

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), May 9, 2022

Chair of the Managing Board Programme Europe, Sofia Municipality No Consultation and review stage... more Chair of the Managing Board Programme Europe, Sofia Municipality No Consultation and review stages Head of Directorate Sport and Youth Activities Directorate Sport and Youth Activities, Sofia Municipality No Consultation and review stages Executive Director Sofia Investment Agency (Sofia Municipality) No Consultation and review stages InnovativeSofia No Consultation and review stages Youth Advisory Council at Sofia Municipality No Consultation and review stages SofiaGreen No Consultation and review stages Directorate Social Services at Sofia municipality No Consultation and review stages Center for urban mobility No Consultation and review stages Municipal Guarantee Fund for SMEs No Consultation and review stages CIVIL SOCIETY Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) Chair of the Managing Board NGO Links No Consultation and review stages Administrative director of BSoP Bulgarian School of Politics (BSoP) No Consultation and review stages Programme coordinator and trainer Centre Rinker for entrepreneurship and education No Consultation and review stages Bulgarian Center of Women in Technology No Consultation and review stages Director Safer Internet Centre No Consultation and review stages Rinker Center /BCause Foundation No Consultation and review stages ARC Consulting No Consultation and review stages NGO Links No Consultation and review stages Bulgarian school of politics No Consultation and review stages Sofena No Consultation and review stages No Consultation and review stages Bulgarian Council of Refugees and Migrants No Consultation and review stages Sofena No Consultation and review stages British Council in Bulgaria No Consultation and review stages National Center for Public Health and Analysis No Consultation and review stages Eneffect No Consultation and review stages Center for the Study of Democracy No Consultation and review stages Eneffect No Consultation and review stages

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The elusive transformation of research and innovation. The overlooked complexities of value alignment and joint responsibility

The Fragility of Responsibility (Book), 2025

RRI is a broad concept that is subject to different interpretations. This chapter focuses on the ... more RRI is a broad concept that is subject to different interpretations. This chapter focuses on the view of RRI as a transformative ideal for reforming the research and innovation system in the service of public interest. This is the normatively strong view of RRI that has attracted many policy-makers and young researchers but left cold many senior researchers and innovators. The transformative vision of RRI has failed to materialise, and RRI remains a marginal reality, even in Norway, where arguably the conditions were more propitious than elsewhere. I attempt to explain the failed transformation, focusing on two key objectives of RRI: the ambition of aligning R&I with societal values and the aspiration to steer R&I through generating a shared responsibility for the future (a prospective joint responsibility in technical terms). Alignment proved very hard to achieve because valuing is steeped in well-established practices, habits, and cognitive-emotional frameworks. These cannot be changed at will. Besides, the ambition to make researchers and innovators more responsive to a wider constituency and additional social responsibilities stumbled against what I call moral saturation, namely the lack of capacity and resources to take on additional moral tasks. Furthermore, modern societies are characterised by a pluralism of values and conceptions of the good life, compounded by the lack of methods for composing value conflicts. These problems come back when we look at what it takes to create expanded shared responsibilities: joint intentions and joint commitments. A formal analysis of how these can be generated shows that they need preconditions that are seldom obtaining in the real world of R&I. So, the transformative ambition went against the inertia and entrenched habits of the R&I ecosystem and yet very often the task of promoting the change was given to junior researchers: the most vulnerable and less powerful actors. I conclude that RRI ambition to transform the R&I system is unrealistic. What can be attempted is to develop small-scale experiments outside the mainstream, where institutional barriers and perverse incentives are partially removed or corrected.

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Visions for sustainable healthy futures for Norway. Citizen Involvement Workshop Executive Report

by Giovanni De Grandis and Liv Eggset Falkenberg

SocArXiv, 2025

We report the results of a citizen involvement workshop on sustainable healthy futures in Norway.... more We report the results of a citizen involvement workshop on sustainable healthy futures in Norway. The workshop was held in Trondheim on November 4-5, 2023 and involved 17 citizens from mid Norway. The good life was the broad theme, and we invited the participants to consider the themes of sustainable health and society within this frame. The participants developed 4 different visions for a sustainable healthy future for Norway. We gave them a mid-term horizon (2070) to leave room for needs- and aspirations-based social imagination, not overly conditioned by the current institutional framework, and to challenge the short-termism of the dominant policy cycles and thinking.The visions developed by the citizens are remarkably consistent in emphasizing the importance of good social integration and community life, interpersonal relations, individual development and an individual’s sense of meaning, contribution, and agency. Noteworthy is also their emphasis on the need to regulate new technologies, and to reduce information overload and unsustainable choices through trusted and transparent governance.The report provides a discussion of the visions, the full text of the 4 visions and a concise background about the method and the project of which the workshop was part. The Sustainable Healthy Futures pilot was a collaboration between the Norwegian centre for responsible research and Innovation (AFINO) and NTNU Health. The main aim of the project was to rethink health in society in the attempt to imagine innovative and sustainable approaches to health in the future.

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Rationality in Action

Croatian Journal of Philosophy, Nov 1, 2002

Utopia revisited: A dialogue on biodata

Biological data have become a strategic resource for the development and marketing of innovative ... more Biological data have become a strategic resource for the development and marketing of innovative biomedical technologies. Building on discussions and controversies about the ownership and commercial exploitation of human tissues, regulations and frameworks for the collection and use of biodata are currently widely discussed. Very important goals are at stake—protection of individual rights, satisfaction of patients’ needs, technological innovation, economic growth—and reconciling them is a formidable challenge. A key tension emerges from the rift between the altruistic and disinterested motivation expected from citizens contributing their data and samples, and the central role of for-profit companies in the development and commercialisation of medical innovations stemming from such data. Turning gifts into proprietary assets raises questions of fairness, trust and exploitation. The private appropriation of data is discussed through a philosophical dialogue modelled after Thomas More’s Utopia. A fictional character presents the central idea: in order to empower people to enter the data market with adequate bargaining power and thus achieving a much fairer distribution of benefits and burdens, biological data should be owned collectively by regional citizen corporations. Some of the pros and cons of this proposal are then discussed by the various characters participating in the dialogue.

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Institutional Governance of Responsible Research and Innovation

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2023

In this chapter, we analyse the debate around the implementation of responsible research and inno... more In this chapter, we analyse the debate around the implementation of responsible research and innovation (RRI) in Higher Education, Funding and Research Centres (HEFRCs). We will illustrate some proposals about how to implement RRI in HERFCs in a good way. Open and inclusive governance is key to fruitful implementation of RRI in these organizations. Governance in this context refers to ways of steering processes in a desirable direction, in this case in the direction of responsible research and innovation that is ethically acceptable and socially desirable. We will present and assess different models of governance and aim to provide ethical governance of research and innovation (R&I) inspired by the most convincing ideas emerged in the current debate.

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Ensuring long-term utility of the AOP Framework and knowledge for multiple stakeholders

Topic: Advancing the Adverse Outcome Pathway Framework - An International Horizon Scanning Approa... more

Is regulatory innovation fit for purpose? A case study of adaptive regulation for advanced biotherapeutics

Regulation & Governance

Fair trade in building digital knowledge repositories: the knowledge economy as if researchers mattered

Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, 2020

Both a significant body of literature and the case study presented here show that digital knowled... more Both a significant body of literature and the case study presented here show that digital knowledge repositories struggle to attract the needed level of data and knowledge contribution that they need to be successful. This happens also to high profile and prestigious initiatives. The paper argues that the reluctance of researchers to contribute can only be understood in light of the highly competitive context in which research careers need to be built nowadays and how this affects researchers’ quality of life. Competition and managerialism limit the discretion of researchers in sharing their results and in donating their working time. A growing corpus of research shows that academic researchers are increasingly overworked and highly stressed. This corroborates the point that the room for undertaking additional tasks with future and uncertain benefits is very limited. The paper thus recommends that promoters of digital knowledge repositories focus on the needs of the researchers who ...

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Harvesting the promise of AOPs: An assessment and recommendations

The Science of the total environment, 2018

The Adverse Outcome Pathway (AOP) concept is a knowledge assembly and communication tool to facil... more The Adverse Outcome Pathway (AOP) concept is a knowledge assembly and communication tool to facilitate the transparent translation of mechanistic information into outcomes meaningful to the regulatory assessment of chemicals. The AOP framework and associated knowledgebases (KBs) have received significant attention and use in the regulatory toxicology community. However, it is increasingly apparent that the potential stakeholder community for the AOP concept and AOP KBs is broader than scientists and regulators directly involved in chemical safety assessment. In this paper we identify and describe those stakeholders who currently-or in the future-could benefit from the application of the AOP framework and knowledge to specific problems. We also summarize the challenges faced in implementing pathway-based approaches such as the AOP framework in biological sciences, and provide a series of recommendations to meet critical needs to ensure further progression of the framework as a useful...

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Ethics in Technology: a Philosophical Study

NanoEthics, 2017

ABSTRACT This book inquires into the question: How to think about ethics in a technological world... more ABSTRACT This book inquires into the question: How to think about ethics in a technological world? This question has three facets: technological advance poses new challenges for ethics, traditional ethics may become poorly applicable in a technological world, and the progress in science and technology has undermined ethical thinking itself. A thematic treatment of these three dimensions of the problematic is followed by an analysis of three central approaches to the questions framed. These are Hans Jonas’ ethics of responsibility, Albert Borgmann’s phenomenological analysis of everyday life in a technological civilization, and Larry Hickman’s pragmatist philosophy of technology. The inquiry concludes with a sketch of future directions for ethics of technology. This includes assessing the roles of applied ethics, science and technology studies (STS), and philosophy of technology in ethics of technology. While the author agrees on the need for an interdisciplinary dialogue between these three traditions, he argues for the primacy of philosophy of technology in thinking about ethics in technology. Furthermore, the centrality of “mid-level ethics” is elaborated on in the conclusion. Here mid-level refers to ethically pregnant phenomena in the realm between instantaneous choices by an individual (micro level) and questions about fundamental principles of justice and societal goods (macro level). Mid-level thus concerns, for instance, habits, practices, and communal institutions.

Conceptual and terminological confusion around personalised medicine: a coping strategy

BMC Medical Ethics, 2016

Background: The idea of personalised medicine (PM) has gathered momentum recently, attracting fun... more Background: The idea of personalised medicine (PM) has gathered momentum recently, attracting funding and generating hopes as well as scepticism. As PM gives rise to differing interpretations, there have been several attempts to clarify the concept. In an influential paper published in this journal, Schleidgen and colleagues have proposed a precise and narrow definition of PM on the basis of a systematic literature review. Given that their conclusion is at odds with those of other recent attempts to understand PM, we consider whether their systematic review gives them an edge over competing interpretations. Discussion: We have found some methodological weaknesses and questionable assumptions in Schleidgen and colleagues' attempt to provide a more specific definition of PM. Our perplexities concern the lack of criteria for assessing the epistemic strength of the definitions that they consider, as well as the logical principles used to extract a more precise definition, the narrowness of the pool from which they have drawn their empirical data, and finally their overlooking the fact that definitions depend on the context of use. We are also worried that their ethical assumption that only patients' interests are legitimate is too simplistic and drives all other stakeholders' interests-including those that are justifiable-underground, thus compromising any hope of a transparent and fair negotiation among a plurality of actors and interests. Conclusion: As an alternative to the shortcomings of attempting a semantic disciplining of the concept we propose a pragmatic approach. Rather than considering PM to be a scientific concept in need of precise demarcation, we look at it as an open and negotiable concept used in a variety of contexts including at the level of orienting research goals and policy objectives. We believe that since PM is still more an ideal than an achieved reality, a plurality of visions is to be expected and we need to pay attention to the people, reasons and interests behind these alternative conceptions. In other words, the logic and politics of PM cannot be disentangled and disagreements need to be tackled addressing the normative and strategic conflicts behind them.

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Practical integration: The art of balancing values, institutions and knowledge: Lessons from the History of British Public Health and Town Planning

Studies in history and philosophy of biological and biomedical sciences, Jan 17, 2015

The paper uses two historical examples, public health (1840-1880) and town planning (1945-1975) i... more The paper uses two historical examples, public health (1840-1880) and town planning (1945-1975) in Britain, to analyse the challenges faced by goal-driven research, an increasingly important trend in science policy, as exemplified by the prominence of calls for addressing Grand Challenges. Two key points are argued. (1) Given that the aim of research addressing social or global problems is to contribute to improving things, this research should include all the steps necessary to bring science and technology to fruition. This need is captured by the idea of practical integration, which brings this type of research under the umbrella of collective practical reason rather than under the aegis of science. Achieving practical integration is difficult for many reasons: the complexity of social needs, the plurality of values at stake, the limitation of our knowledge, the elusive nature of the skills needed to deal with uncertainty, incomplete information and asymmetries of power. Neverthel...

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Introduction-Grand Challenges and small steps

Studies in history and philosophy of biological and biomedical sciences, Jan 16, 2015

This collection addresses two different audiences: 1) historians and philosophers of the life sci... more This collection addresses two different audiences: 1) historians and philosophers of the life sciences reflecting on collaborations across disciplines, especially as regards defining and addressing Grand Challenges; 2) researchers and other stakeholders involved in cross-disciplinary collaborations aimed at tackling Grand Challenges in the life and medical sciences. The essays collected here offer ideas and resources both for the study and for the practice of goal-driven cross-disciplinary research in the life and medical sciences. We organise this introduction in three sections. The first section provides some background and context. The second motivates our take on this topic and then outlines the central ideas of each paper. The third section highlights the specificity and significance of this approach by considering: a) how this collection departs from existing literature on inter- and trans-disciplinarity, b) what is characteristic about this approach, and c) what role this sug...

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Making Sense of A Theory of Justice

Croatian Journal of Philosophy

The primary aim of this interpretive essay is to reconstruct some of the most important features ... more The primary aim of this interpretive essay is to reconstruct some of the most important features of Rawls's theory of justice, and to offer a hypothesis about how its assumptions and arguments are tied together in a highly structured construction. An almost philological approach is adopted to highlight Rawlsian ideas. First, I consider in what sense Rawls is an individualist and in what sense he is not. From this I conclude that he ought not be charged of psychological egoism or atomism. Then I consider the role of rational choice, the contract and the relation of the latter to the criterion of reflective equilibrium. Here, pride of place is given to the reflexive method, while the role of contract and rational choice, though not denied, is downgraded. Finally, I enquire whether Rawls can be considered a universalist, and suggest that this category, owing to the theory's practical aim and pragmatic method, is of little use. If successful, my reconstruction should offer a better insight into the theory and dispel some possible misunderstandings. But my presentation should not be read as either an assessment or a defense.

A Starting Point for a Practical and Methodological Discussion. Review of Susan S. Fainstein’s The Just City

ABSTRACT

Rescuing Solidarity from Its Carers. A Response to Professor ter Meulen

Diametros

The paper points out three serious problems in Ruud ter Meulen's view of solidarity and of its ro... more The paper points out three serious problems in Ruud ter Meulen's view of solidarity and of its role in healthcare ethics. First, it is not clear whether and to what extent ter Meulen expects normative concepts to be rooted in existing social practices: his criticism of liberal theories of justice seems to imply a different view on this issue than his implicit assumption that normative concepts are independent from social and historical trends. Second, it is not clear at which level his notion of solidarity is meant to be applied: does it provide principles for individuals or for institutions? Nor is it clear at what level of generality it should work: is it meant for healthcare institutions or for states, for citizens or for healthcare practitioners? Third, it is not at all clear how the communitarian and the universalist aspirations in his conception of solidarity can be reconciled. In light of such difficulties it is argued that within philosophical discourse solidarity can be a useful notion only if it can be clearly distinguished from existing and commonly used ethical concepts. Three examples of such narrow and specific uses of solidarity are presented. Finally, a sceptical view of confining the work of applied philosophers to articulating normative concepts is put forward and an alternative view of blending empirical and philosophical analysis is proposed. This vision of field philosophy requires serious attention and careful understanding of the circumstances and constraints within which normative recommendations operate. It is suggested that such a modest and empirically grounded understanding of normative work is a better way of honouring the belief that philosophy is rooted in social institutions and in complex webs of relations.

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Measuring Openness and Evaluating Digital Academic Publishing Models: Not Quite the Same Business

The Journal of Electronic Publishing, 2014

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On the Analogy Between Infectious Diseases and War: How to Use it and not to Use it

Public Health Ethics, 2011

... have been quarantined: for instance citizens of Japanese ancestry in the USA during World War... more ... have been quarantined: for instance citizens of Japanese ancestry in the USA during World War II. ... resistant microbes, it is interesting to look at a real case of a public health important initiative ... tackle the spread of an infectious disease in which concern for the emergence of drug ...

Book Review: The Impact of the Internet on Our Moral Lives

Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 2007

This collection of essays has a very promising, but slightly misleading, title. The Internet is b... more This collection of essays has a very promising, but slightly misleading, title. The Internet is becoming the medium for a large variety of activities and relations, is transforming our perception of time and distance, and is spreading new ways of communicating and cooperating while undermining old ones. No doubt it is transforming our lives, but how much and how deeply is it transforming our values and demanding new principles and virtues? Such are the issues broached by this book. With the exception of the first essay – which in my view remains rather alien to the project – the contributions in Part I tackle some familiar moral problems and the way in which they present themselves in cyberspace. The essays are recognizable instances of applied ethics: they illustrate concrete problems and try to suggest possible solutions. In so doing they show how moral and legal questions such as copyright, plagiarism, pornography and trust present themselves in the online world. The first two issues have admittedly gained new prominence by the advent of the Internet, and they are very good examples of how a new, powerful and widespread medium can bring back to the fore ethical issues that might have looked more or less morally settled and hence ‘cold’. Both Spinello’s chapter on copyright and Hinman’s on plagiarism among students offer a good deal of factual information about the impact of the Internet on these issues, and do so with clarity. I am less convinced by their normative solutions. Spinello takes too much of a conservative approach and fails to appreciate how practices and possibilities that emerge with the digital media do in fact challenge our intuitions and sensibility and remind us that our normative horizon might be neither timeless nor unquestionable. In this respect, the more historically and socially aware approach taken by Nissembaum in her chapter on hackers (in Part II) shows how important it is to have a bigger picture in order to appreciate and reveal the ethical implications of new technologies. Hinman adopts a strongly Aristotelian position in putting forward a list of virtues that would support an effective fight against students’ plagiarism. I don’t have any objection in using an ethical theory for analytical purposes, to highlight the moral issues and stakes raised by digital technologies, but when ancient ethical theories are used as sources of normative prescriptions many serious questions arise. Our world and Book Reviews

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