Where ORBIT came from, and what we do now.

ORBIT began in 2017 as a five-year project funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). The brief was to build a national centre of practice for Responsible Research and Innovation in information and communications technology, with a particular focus on giving researchers and developers the tools to anticipate, reflect on, engage with and act on the social consequences of their work.

When the EPSRC grant ended in early 2022, the work continued under ORBIT-RRI Ltd, the not-for-profit company we incorporated in 2020 to put the project on a long-term footing. The institutional knowledge, the AREA-framework expertise and the working relationships with universities all carried across. What changed was the operating model, from a fixed-term grant to a sustainable not-for-profit that trades on the strength of its training.

ORBIT-RRI Ltd is a Company Limited by Guarantee. We have five Members: De Montfort University, the University of Oxford, and three directors. We are governed by our Articles of Association and a Members Agreement, and we operate on a not-for-profit basis.

Any surplus generated from training and consultancy is reinvested into the resources, tools and open courses we make freely available, including the AREA 4P framework guide, the Keys of RRI, the RRI Maturity tool and the self-assessment instruments. The structure is deliberate: we want the financial model to underwrite the open material, not the other way round.

We promote responsible innovation in ICT and adjacent technology domains. We treat Responsible Research and Innovation as a working method rather than a slogan: a transparent, interactive process through which researchers, funders, industry and the publics affected by research can shape each other's expectations, choices and outcomes.

The shorthand we use internally is that we exist to develop trusted, responsible, empowered innovators across the UK research base. We work with whoever is willing to take that seriously: PhD cohorts, individual research groups, faculty departments, research offices, CDTs and DTPs, industry R and D teams, and partner organisations internationally.

Information and communications technology touches almost every part of contemporary life, yet it rarely attracts the kind of public scrutiny applied to other research areas. Most of the consequence of an ICT system is felt at deployment, by people who had no hand in scoping it. Most of the design space, by then, has been closed.

Because ICT increasingly blurs the lines between research, product and policy, the choices made early in a project tend to ripple a long way. Practising RRI early gives researchers and funders the chance to recognise those consequences while there is still room to change course. That is the work we train people for.

Our Co-Investigators are Bernd Stahl, a senior figure in the international RRI community, and Marina Jirotka, Professor of Human-Centred Computing at the University of Oxford. Our Training Manager Serena Dolby leads on course design and facilitation. Our research team includes Carolyn Ten Holter, working on responsible quantum technologies and RRI, and Philip Inglesant.

Bernd Stahl

Co-Investigator

Marina Jirotka

Co-Investigator

Serena Dolby

Training Manager

Carolyn Ten Holter

Researcher

ORBIT is supported by an Advisory Board of ten senior figures from across academia, industry and policy. They sense-check our work, broaden our reach and connect the training to the field as it moves.

• Derek McAuley
• Rob Procter
• Ewa Luger
• Shannon Vallor
• Maria Axente
• Lesley Thompson
• Jonathan Legh-Smith
• Ben Wagner
• Abigail Sellen
• Jane Hillston

ORBIT has working relationships with more than 25 UK universities, alongside our Member institutions De Montfort University and the University of Oxford. We collaborate internationally, including with the University of Strasbourg, and we are an academic partner of the Elsevier-published Journal of Responsible Technology.

• De Montfort University
• University of Oxford
• University of Edinburgh
• Imperial College London
• University of Bath
• Cardiff University
• University of Manchester
• University of Bristol
• University of Sheffield
• King's College London
• University of Strasbourg
• And many more