Anne Bergmans

Researcher, WP4 and WP5

The contributions of the University of Antwep to the HoNESt research project is coordinated by Dr. Anne Bergmans. Anne is lecturer and senior research fellow at UA’s Faculty of Social Sciences and at the Faculty of Law. She holds a PhD in Social Sciences and Master Degree in International Politics and Maritime Economics. Anne’s professional interests are mainly situated in the field of science and technology studies, with particular attention to the interaction between science, society and policy. As lecturer, she acts as scientific coordinator of a master in safety studies, and teaches in courses on environment and urbanization, environmental sociology, sociology of risk and emergency planning and response. A good part of her research is focused on public and stakeholder engagement in radioactive waste management. In that respect, Anne has been involved in the partnership programme ONDRAF/NIRAS launched in 1998 to site a LILW- repository in Belgium. She coordinated the CARL project (2005-2008), an international social science research project on the effects of stakeholder engagement on decision-making in radioactive waste management, and acted as supervisor and coordinator of the InSOTEC project, funded under the 7th Framework Program (EURATOM; 2012-2014). This project focused on boundary work between the social and the technical in R&D and planning for geological disposal. Anne was furthermore involved in the MoDeRn project (Monitoring Developments for safe Repository operation and staged closure), a four year collaborative project, also funded under the 7th Framework Program (EURATOM; 2009-2012), where she coordinated the social sciences work, which addressed possibilities for early stakeholder engagement in defining monitoring strategies. She is currently involved in its successor project, MoDeRn2020 (EURATOM – H2020; 2014-2018).

Relevant Publications

Bergmans, A. et al., 2012. Perspectives on radioactive waste repository monitoring : confirmation, compliance, confidence building, and societal vigilance. TECHNIKFOLGENABSCHÄTZUNG - Theorie und Praxis, 21(3), pp.22–28..
Bergmans, A. et al., 2015. The participatory turn in radioactive waste management: deliberation and the socialtechnical divide. Journal of risk research, 18(3), pp.347–363.
Landstroem, C. & Bergmans, A., 2015. Long-term repository governance: a socio-technical challenge. Journal of risk research, 18(3), pp.378–391.