Jim Dratwa

Jim Dratwa is a Belgian philosopher, author and polymath. His research and publications address the interconnections between innovation, ethics and democracy. He is best known for his work bringing together arts and sciences and humanities, and also bringing together academic work, public service and civic commitment. An important part of his work focusses on values and democracy, social and environmental justice, the relations between green and digital (from climate change to biotechnology to artificial intelligence), and the ethics of transitions.
Early career
Further to his degrees in physics, philosophy, politics and the life sciences, he obtained his PhD in socio-economics of innovation from the Ecole des Mines de Paris, with Bruno Latour, and his PhD in philosophy from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, with Isabelle Stengers, having benefited from the support of the Fulbright program, the Frank Boas Foundation, the Belgian American Educational Foundation and the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique. He received the Fulbright Scholar Award, was Harvard Boas Fellow, Ramón y Cajal Scholar, and was pre- and post-doctoral Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, with the Science, Technology, and Public Policy program in the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and with the program on Science, Technology, and Society, with Sheila Jasanoff. In the course of his academic career he has taught at the Ecole des Mines de Paris, Sciences Po Paris, Harvard University, and the universities of Brussels, where he is based. He is also a Distinguished Scholar of the Free University of Brussels (VUB). It is under the Obama administration that he was made Global Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Center, whose fellows are chosen based on their record achievements as authorities in their field.
Work
Dratwa is a philosopher and STS scholar whose work consists in a systematic consideration and furthering of peace, democracy, solidarity, and societal transitions. His work explores and expands a diversity of literary forms, from poetry and dramaturgy through to policymaking essays, scholarly inquiries, and stories of resistance, sometimes also bringing in installations and game creations, inviting to reinvent the interplay between authors and publics, between the individual and the collective, between institution and imagination, between what is and what could be.
He has served in several positions of responsibility in that regard at the European Commission, notably as member of the Bureau of European Policy Advisers to the President and at the European Political Strategy Centre, the Commission's in-house think-tank. He is a senior European public servant as well as a professor of public policy, political philosophy and European integration. At the European Commission he heads the team tasked with Ethics in Science and New Technologies, he is the Secretary-General of the EC International Dialogue on Ethics and Bioethics, and the EC envoy to the international organisations dealing with the ethics and governance of science and new technologies (UNESCO, WHO, WTO, ILO, ITU, WIPO, UNEP, UNICEF, Council of Europe, OECD). In parallel, he organised and hosted the European Commission’s community of practice on participation and deliberation - involving active practitioners also working with fellow facilitators developing the art of hosting conversations that matter inside and outside the EU institutions - notably in the context of the European Commission’s Group on "Ethics and EU Policies", which Dratwa convened and chaired as of 2012. He has been saluted by the press as one of the leading European thinkers of his generation.
Philosophical lines of inquiry
Working closely with Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers and Sheila Jasanoff, he develops ethnographies of international organisations and their contestations, of the interplay between different forms of expertise and legitimation, of the articulations of science and policy, of knowledge and power and public action, which he starts to analyse as articulations of sense-making and world-making, notably through reconceptualisations of the precautionary principle and the attendant reinventions of regulation, governmentality and sovereignty. Dratwa creates the concept of "Open Beta Society" as a way to shed light on deeply entrenched forms of oppression and exploitation - as well as to bring to light possibilities ("relations") of resistance and reinvention. It is also an explicit reflection on the power plays and performative language games of such framings.
These trails of inquiry connect together in Dratwa’s concept of the Schemes. The Schemes are performative ways to think, tell, and make the world. The concept of Schemes is elaborated as an explicit outmanoeuvring of the urge to erect generalised systems. Along with "frame hacking", "morality design", and other antidotes to hegemony such as Dratwa's originative question-concept and game author. His game creations are noted for furthering the reflection on engagement and responsibility as well as on dialogue and diversity, through which new narratives and common worlds can emerge: such is the case of Eternity (co-authored with Cyril Blondel), for which he was awarded the 2015 Ludix Prize, hailed by critics as one of the best card games ever, about engagement through environmental justice, peace building and harmony. Hao Hao (co-authored with Thibault Quintens) was created to raise awareness concerning biodiversity and endangered species, in collaboration with Pairi Daiza, working with the WWF and participating in the European Endangered Species Programme. Potentia was created with a group of Belgium-based and international NGOs (namely Quinoa, Rencontre des Continents, Oxfam-Magasins du monde) as an "experiential crucible of engagement and social transformation". Anansi is explicitly a game about storytelling, a mise en abyme about the relationships between authors and publics as co-creators. Débats Débiles and Moi Président are creative openings to unpack and reimagine democracy. Dratwa has argued that "Games are culture made and in the making, they are created and a catalyst for co-creation, social critique, reflection, emancipation and engagement". He also gave the keynote launching the International Observatory on Artificial Intelligence in Montreal in 2018 and has continued to be consulted by civil society organisations, governments and parliaments in Europe as well. These questions and mobilisations are at the heart of his 2019 book, Dans quel monde voulons-nous vivre ensemble? ("What world do we want to live in together?").
Published games
*Hao Hao (2014) (co-authored with Thibault Quintens), published by Act in Games (Belgium).
*Moi Président (2015) (co-authored with Cyril Blondel), published by FlipFlap éditions (France).
*Wacky Challenge (2015), published by Ilopeli (France).
*Potentia (2016), published by Quinoa (Belgium).
*Eternity (2016) (co-authored with Cyril Blondel), published by Blackrock Games (France).
*Débats Débiles (2018) (co-authored with Cyril Blondel), published by Le Droit De Perdre (France).
*Robby One (2019) (co-authored with Cyril Blondel), published by Flip Flap Editions (France).
*Anansi (2020) (co-authored with Cyril Blondel), published by HeidelBÄR Games (Germany).

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