Abstract
Keywords
Introduction
While early science and technology studies (STS) scholarship closely followed the emergence of nanotechnology – particularly during its speculative and promissory phase (Macnaghten et al., 2005; Kjølberg & Wickson, 2007; Selin, 2007) – recent analyses suggest a notable decline in sustained engagement. For instance, a bibliometric study published in
Nanotechnology has been heralded as the frontier of technological innovation for almost thirty years, promising everything from clean energy to targeted drug delivery. As scholars observed almost two decades ago, at the cutting edge of innovation, nanotechnology operates with a speculative futurity: “Bottom-up or top-down, the
Early interest and excitement around nanotechnology in the 1980s and 1990 was driven by futuristic imaginaries of molecular machines, medical breakthroughs, and revolutionary materials. However, by the early 2000s, public responses to nanotechnology became marked by a blend of enthusiasm and concern (Macnaghten et al., 2005; Macoubrie, 2006; Pidgeon et al., 2011). While many viewed nanotechnology as a revolutionary field with the potential to transform industries, apprehensions about safety, health risks, and environmental impacts emerged (Kahan et al., 2009; Fisher & Mahajan, 2006). These concerns led to efforts aimed at public education and awareness, highlighting the need for regulatory frameworks to address the unique challenges of nanoscale materials (Michelson, 2008; Marchant et al., 2008). STS scholarship mirrored the concerns of public and scientific communities, and by the 2010s, nanotechnology had become a paradigmatic site for examining the role of promissory discourse in shaping technoscientific fields, with widespread calls for anticipatory governance and upstream engagement (Kearnes & Macnaghten, 2006; Barben et al., 2008; Joly & Kaufmann, 2008).
Today, many of nanotechnology's early promises have been at least partially realised, making it an instructive case for examining how speculative ideals become institutionalised. Nanoscience now underpins widespread applications across medicine, electronics, energy, and environmental science, enabling the development of stronger materials, more efficient solar cells, and advanced water purification (Modi et al., 2022; Deshmukh et al., 2021; Ying et al., 2017). In healthcare, it has transformed drug delivery systems, enabling targeted therapies that minimise side effects (Chenxi et al., 2025), while DNA nanotechnology is advancing bioengineering and diagnostic tools (Lien, 2025). Two decades on from nanotechnology's ‘peak’ in public and STS interest, it has in many ways become sedimented and infrastructural – routinised within funding schemes, research agendas, and commercial applications – while STS attention has largely shifted to newer speculative frontiers such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing. These cycles of scholarly attention are not solely intellectual but are also entangled with changing regimes of research funding, where strategic investment in the next frontier continually reorients what becomes visible in STS research itself. While our study does not empirically address these shifting attention cycles within STS, we raise them rhetorically to prompt reflection on how evolving funding priorities and new speculative frontiers shape what becomes visible, thinkable, and researchable. As scholarly interest moves with the hype cycle, what happens to earlier technoscientific promises once they are institutionalised? How do researchers contend with the enduring expectations, ethical entanglements, and structural constraints that remain long after a technology's speculative moment has passed?
In this paper, we return to nanotechnology to study the afterlives of promissory technologies that are now embedded in the everyday. We examine the enduring ethical and social challenges facing technoscientific innovation (Salamanca-Buentello & Daar, 2021), which must meet the evolving (visionary) aspirations of innovators and demands of society while working within inequitable economic and social systems and amidst diverse and often contradictory vested interests. We focus specifically on the landscape of nanotechnology innovation within the university research sector in Australia, where nanotechnology is increasingly embedded within broader innovation and commercialisation agendas (Nugent & Chan, 2023). Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with academic nanotechnology scientists (
By re-examining nanotechnology at this institutionalised stage, we make two key contributions. First, we offer an empirically grounded account of how scientists working in university-based nanoscience negotiate the promissory legacies of nano, which continues to shape practice and institutional life. Second, we use nanotechnology as a diagnostic site to reflect critically on STS attention cycles and the risks of overlooking technologies once they transition from speculative to sedimented. The field's necessary reliance on funding cycles to undertake critical research reflects wider societal and governmental interests in technoscience, where attention to emerging, speculative technologies can obscure the political and ethical work required to sustain, reconfigure, or resist earlier visions as they become embedded in institutional life. While nano may no longer be ‘new’, it remains a crucial site for understanding how speculative futures solidify into enduring infrastructures and contemporary technoscientific systems.
Background
STS and Nanotechnology
The social sciences have long engaged with both the promises and potential perils of nanotechnology (Fisher, 2007; Shelley-Egan, 2010; Macnaghten & Guivant, 2011; Thorstensen, 2014), arguing for the critical importance of addressing the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of nanotechnology. Early work on the social dimensions of technological innovation highlighted the risks of unchecked and uneven development, emphasising that technologies carry not only technical but also profound societal impacts, as a lack of deliberate attention to ELSI can reinforce existing inequalities and generate unexpected risks to public health (Guston, 2000; Jasanoff, 2004). In the realm of STS, scholars analysed not only the speculative promises of nanotechnology but also its modes of governance, public engagement, and anticipatory ethics that developed alongside it (Kearnes & Macnaghten, 2006; Barben et al., 2008; Joly & Kaufmann, 2008). These promissory narratives were not just metaphorical, they also shaped research agendas, policy priorities, and funding frameworks, embedding visions of scientific progress into institutional structures. As Kearnes and Rip (2009) argued, nanotechnology became a paradigmatic case of ‘governing by expectations’ where imagined futures exert real effects in the present.
This promissory orientation aligns with STS’ broader concern with the relationship between innovation and society, especially in terms of ‘sociotechnical imaginaries’. Sociotechnical imaginaries are “collectively held, institutionally stabilized, and publicly performed visions of desirable futures, animated by shared understandings of forms of social life and social order attainable through, and supportive of, advances in science and technology.” (Jasanoff, 2015, p. 4). Sociotechnical imaginaries are collective visions of imagined futures that gesture toward what is ‘good’ and ‘desirable’. They “invoke what the world is and what the world should be”, with a particular emphasis on the role of technology therein (Smith & Tidwell, 2016, p. 330). Sociotechnical imaginaries are collective, meaning that different visions of desirable futures inevitably coexist and clash. They also guide real-world decisions around policy agendas, demonstrating the ways that imaginaries are made concrete through policy and funding decisions.
These imaginaries, while aspirational, also pose risks, as emerging technologies often lack formal regulatory frameworks and informed public engagement. In the specific case of nanotechnology, researchers responded by advocating for anticipatory governance and engagement with ELSI, arguing that nanotechnology's unique properties and potential applications demand proactive ethical oversight, public dialogue, and policy innovation (Fisher, 2005; Grunwald, 2014; Schroeder et al., 2016).
Despite nanotechnology's entanglement with our sociotechnical lives in the present, from solar panels to vaccines, the prominence of nanotechnology within STS has declined in recent years, even as the field has become increasingly embedded in institutional and commercial infrastructures. Bibliometric data based on key word research of ‘nano’ and ‘social’ in the literature shows a dramatic increase between the years 2000–2009, remaining at a peak between 2009–2012, with a steady fall from 2014 (Seifert & Fautz, 2021, p. 144). Instead, STS attention has shifted toward newer speculative frontiers, such as artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, and quantum computing while nano has receded from view. This shift raises critical questions about the hype economy of STS itself: why does scholarly attention cluster around speculative moments of emergence, and what is lost when STS moves on before the consequences of early promises unfold?
To address these questions, our analysis builds on concepts such as the ‘sociology of expectations’ (Brown & Michael, 2003), and the institutionalisation of hype (Borup et al., 2006; van Lente & Rip, 1998; Brown, 2003). These frameworks help us trace how visionary narratives shape, but also exceed, the agency of individual researchers, becoming embedded in funding structures, commercial imperatives, and research governance. We also draw on work on co-production (Jasanoff, 2004), which highlights the reciprocal shaping of science and society and how scientific knowledge and technological innovation emerge not in isolation, but through ongoing entanglements with political, economic, and institutional arrangements.
In this context, ELSI is not our central analytic object, but rather a conceptual entry point; a way of tracing how ethical and social considerations are understood, absorbed, displaced, or bureaucratised in the everyday practices of scientific research. As we show, while the language of responsible innovation persists, engagement with ELSI often takes administrative or ‘box-ticking’ forms, detached from the structural challenges scientists face in a university system increasingly oriented toward commercialisation. Attending to how ELSI is practiced ‘on the ground’ offers insight into the afterlives of promissory technologies: how the speculative futures of technoscience become sedimented into institutional routines, and how scientists continue to navigate the gap between idealised visions and everyday realities.
Methods
Study Design and Aim
This paper draws on a collaborative, interdisciplinary research project conducted by investigators based in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and The University of Sydney Nano Institute (Sydney Nano) at The University of Sydney. This sociological project utilised qualitative methods to explore how scientists working in nanotechnology navigate the ethical, institutional and commercial dimensions of their research, with particular attention to how the promises of nanotechnology are experienced and negotiated in everyday practice. ELSI informed the study as a conceptual entry point through which to examine how scientists understand and enact ethical, legal, and social considerations, and how these are shaped and constrained within institutional structures of research.
Participants and Recruitment
Data was collected through 34 in-depth qualitative interviews with nanotechnology researchers from 10 different universities across Australia. Participants were recruited using a purposive sampling strategy to capture a diversity of career stages, disciplinary affiliations and institutional contexts. Recruitment was conducted via email invitation, investigator networks, and passive snowballing. All participants were academic scientists engaged in university-based nanotechnology research across disciplines such as physics, chemistry, materials science, and engineering. Interviewees included 4 postdoctoral fellows, 4 lecturers, 1 senior lecturer, 6 research fellows, 6 associate professors, 12 professors, and 1 professional staff member. The gender breakdown of participants was 24 men and 10 women.
Ethical Considerations
The study received ethics approval from The University of Sydney Human Research Ethics Committee (Project No. 2023/HE000295). Potential participants were provided with information about the study, including consent documentation, and invited to participate on a voluntary basis. All participants provided written consent in accordance with ethics approval. Interviews were conducted either face-to-face or via Zoom, depending on participant preference and availability. All interviews were audio-recorded with consent, transcribed in full, and de-identified to protect confidentiality. Participants were assigned pseudonyms in all transcripts and are referred to by their pseudonyms throughout this publication.
Data Collection
Interviews were semi-structured and lasted approximately 60 min. The interviews included questions about participants’ views on the role of science in society, their scientific pathways, experiences with research funding and commercialisation, the institutional and policy pressures shaping their work, and their engagement (if any) with ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) or sustainability concerns. Guiding questions covered five key thematic areas: (1) the cultural politics of science and innovation; (2) perceptions of scale and the nanoscale; (3) commercialisation, regulation, and payoff; (4) epistemic and funding politics; and (5) ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of nanotechnology research.
While ELSI was a point of entry, the interviews were designed to be open-ended and exploratory, allowing participants to articulate how broader institutional, commercial, and normative dimensions of innovation shaped their research practices. This approach is consistent with qualitative interview traditions in the social sciences, and elicited participants’ own understandings of how ethical, legal, and social considerations featured in their work.
Participants were invited to reflect on ELSI as they understood it, with prompts addressing engagement in interdisciplinary teams; collaboration with arts and social science researchers; anticipated social, sustainability, and equity impacts of nanotechnology and its implementation; understandings of how legal, ethical, and social implications featured in their research, and public or stakeholder involvement in co-designing or applying research. Data collection began in May 2023 and concluded in December 2023 when data saturation was reached.
Data Analysis
Data analysis drew on interpretive approaches in qualitative social science research, particularly grounded theory (Charmaz, 1990) and situational analysis (Clarke, 2003). These methods are widely used and well-established in the social sciences for analysing in-depth qualitative interview data, making sense of complex, context-dependent phenomena. Grounded theory is a method of developing conceptual insights inductively from empirical data, through close, iterative engagement with participants’ narratives rather than testing predefined hypotheses. Situational analysis extends this by considering not only individual accounts but also the broader institutional, discursive, and material contexts in which those accounts are embedded. Together, these methods are particularly well suited to exploring how scientists make sense of their work within complex research systems shaped by shifting expectations and structural pressures. Our aim was not to quantify frequency or measure attitudes, but to interpret how participants understand and navigate nanotechnology in the everyday contexts of academic research.
Interviews were analysed using inductive thematic coding, a systemic and iterative method for identifying, analysing and interpreting patterns of meaning across qualitative data, rather than applying predefined categories. This process enables exploration of complex, context-dependent issues. such as how scientists navigate the lingering promises and structural constraints of nanotechnology. Inductive coding is a foundational method in qualitative research and is widely applied in social science fields (Braun & Clarke, 2006).
Each transcript was read closely and coded multiple times by members of the research team. We identified recurring topics, conceptual tensions, and moments of ambiguity or contradiction, while also attending to the broader institutional, discursive, and policy contexts shaping participants’ accounts. Through this iterative process, we developed and refined key thematic categories. These were not viewed as isolated variables, but as interpretive insights into how scientists experience the structural realities of research, innovation, and responsibility in the context of nanotechnology. Our aim was to interpret the meaning-making practices of participants and situate them within the broader dynamics of technoscientific promise, institutionalisation, and shifting regimes of academic work.
Results
The interview data revealed how the sedimentation of speculative technoscientific promise manifests in the everyday practices of research and innovation. That is, promissory understandings of what science ‘is’ and what science ‘ought’ to do persist even as scientists operate within increasingly commercialised, competitive, and bureaucratic conditions. These tensions were visible as participants reflected on their understanding and engagement with ELSI and on the broader institutional conditions that shaped how such considerations could be meaningfully taken up. These reflections included participant's motivations for pursuing science, their views on the role of science in society, and the practical challenges of conducting research, particularly within the competitive landscape of grants and funding, job precarity, and the increasing push towards commercialisation in the university sector. While many scientists articulated deeply held commitments to the social value of their work, they also described operating within a research system that constrained the extent to which these commitments could be realised in practice.
Although these dynamics are not unique to nanotechnology, the field's history as a site of technoscientific promise, alongside its institutional embedding within innovation-driven university agendas, make it a particularly revealing context for examining how such promises become sedimented in research culture. Four key thematic areas emerged from the interviews, each illustrating how the promissory ideal associated with nanotechnology – and contemporary science more broadly – intersect with the structural realities of contemporary academic life. These include: 1) The persistence of idealised visions of science and its role in society; 2) The complex relationship between the university and industry 3); The intensifying push toward commercialisation; 4) The contrast between value-driven vs administrative engagement with ELSI. Together, these themes illustrate how promissory narratives continue to shape scientific practice after the speculative moment has passed, materialising in expectations, policies and research cultures.
Finding 1: Idealised Understandings of Science and its Role in Society
Across the interviews, a common theme emerged regarding the idealised role of science and its presumed benefits for society. This aligns with foundational sociologist Max Weber's (1946) idea of science as a vocation that pursues objective, rational knowledge and progresses in a way that serves humanity's advancement, yet which must also be understood as ethically fraught and potentially weaponised.
A central feature of the interviews was the belief that scientific progress is synonymous with societal advancement. As Gary expressed: What science is meant to do is create a benefit for, I think, everyone's advantage, for a benefit of mankind, people kind, I think, probably the better way to frame it now, where what you’re actually doing is you’re improving quality of life, you’re improving people's enjoyment in their time whilst they’re here. I think what science is meant to do is advance us with each and every single generation.
Further reinforcing this vision, participants frequently expressed the idea that science is an inherent “part of the human condition”, driven by an innate desire to understand the world: Science is the way to solve human curiosity, and that's why we kind of have it. (Deborah) Science is part of the human condition. No other species has got the intellect to even consider this scientific construct … I’d like to think science is – there is this intrinsic human condition to seek knowledge and understand the universe and the scientific method … So, science creates knowledge, creates enlightenment, which is part of the human conditions. We’re an enlightened species that is self-aware that wants to understand our place in the universe. (John)
This idealised understanding of science as objective and universal was further articulated by Ellen: So look, I always think science is truth. I mean, that's a grand statement, right. But essentially, I hope when we’re having all these debates, and we’re having lots of them, of course, at the moment, I kind of hope, perhaps naively, that science is what presents the truth to people. And it's fact-based truth, right. So we can pick climate change, but, of course, we can pick almost any discussion you want to have and say, “Okay, regardless of your emotive opinion, here are the facts of the situation and the natural conclusion from that set of facts is this.” And so that, to me, has to be the role of science in any conversation. You’re not providing an opinion, you’re actually providing a conclusion based on a series of facts.
Indeed, many scientists conveyed a strong sense of responsibility for directing societal progress, reflecting the idea that science is not only a tool for discovering truth but also a moral force guiding society: Ooh. I guess science is definitely the catalyst or the arrow of time for culture and society really. The science investigation, and consequently the technology and understanding that come from it, really drive most of the big changes in society, going forward, because I guess the terms of how we operate changes. That, yeah, does tend to lead to cultural change … But yeah, I think it's more the other way, where science and technology precedes cultural changes as well. (Tim) Well, I think it's very vast thing, but I think, as scientists, we have a big responsibility to direct the society … Yeah, I think we have a really big responsibility to drive the society in the right direction. (Carla)
Finding 2: The Complex Relationship Between University and Industry in the Australian Context
The second finding from the interviews was a polarising yet evolving interdependency between universities and industry, highlighting a fundamental tension between the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and the demand for measurable societal impact. While some participants framed these two domains as inherently opposed, others saw them as complementary but fraught with structural and cultural challenges.
For many participants, universities were described as spaces of exploration and intellectual freedom, driven by curiosity and the pursuit of ‘blue skies’ research: I think university research is just that it's more fundamental and it's blue sky ideas. You can try many blue sky ideas. Well, in industry, at least in the industry project I’m working on, you can see clear milestones. They need one after the other. (Dean) So, I like challenge and that keeps me alive and that makes me wake up in the morning and happily drive to work if I know that there is something that I need to resolve […] I mean, that's the whole purpose of the university. University is discovery-based, industry is product-based. I think they’re both very exciting, but if I have to choose, I chose the discovery. That makes me way more excited. (Ada)
However, industry was also framed as the domain where innovation is applied, and societal impact is realised: Yeah, the main reason I like to work with industry is, I suppose one word sums it up, impact. You could be in a lab and you could be developing your own widgets and you could be in your own little bubble I suppose and, in my eyes, it's never really going to provide any meaningful impact. If we want things to improve around society or around the climate, at the end of the day it has to end up working somewhere on something […] So implicitly, if you work with industry and your ideas end up getting made and applied, I think that has more impact and that's why I like doing it. (Chris) … working with industry to solve industry problems is often quite rewarding. There's always the risk that industry will try and use public funds to solve private enterprise problems. But actually, often they pose such interesting questions that they can generate entire new directions of research. … universities are in a process of trying to monetise their research and they think of themselves as being incubators or innovators, and they’re not. In fact, most of the evidence, and I get lots of debates and talks about this, universities are the worst place to do innovation. In fact, most indications are that once a university becomes an incubator, the quality of the research patents drops because what happens is, it tries to hold onto it when actually what it should do is get rid of it. (Dom)
The perspectives shared by participants reflect a spectrum of attitudes toward academia and industry, from idealised visions of academic freedom to pragmatic embrace of industry's focus on application and impact. Such positionalities resonate with broader concerns about the neoliberal transformation of universities, where market logics increasingly shape academic practices and priorities. They also reveal how promissory expectations attached to innovation – whether in nanotechnology or other fields – become institutionalised in ways that blur the boundaries between public knowledge and private value, giving rise to a new landscape of both opportunities and liabilities.
Finding 3: The Increasing Push Toward Commercialisation
As the previous section demonstrates, participants had varied perspectives on the current relationship between industry and university research in the Australian context. Overall, there was an implicit ‘one or the other’ approach that mirrored the tension between the ‘idealistic’ drive for knowledge and the realities of how research innovation is enacted in the ‘everyday’. This tension played out further in participants’ reflections on the increasing push toward commercialisation in the university sector. For some participants, such commercialisation of academic research was seen as antithetical to the core values of curiosity-driven science, and seen as something that disrupted the nurturing of a future generation of scientists: I’m motivating the students and I want to be sure that they produce new science rather than commercialise it. (Ellen) … I had and have absolutely no interest in commercialising any of my research. […] I just was not and am not interested in getting into that whole commercial world. So, it was just something that was never of interest to me. To be honest, I worked at the university mostly because I really enjoyed working with young people and with students. It was always my greatest pleasure. And people came into my labs and hopefully learned some stuff and I learned lots from them of course, and that was really what it was about for us. And then we were lucky enough to do, I think, some nice research, publish some good papers. But beyond that, the people making money in a commercial venture was really something I was never interested in. (Oliver)
On the other hand, some participants viewed commercialisation as a necessary, albeit fraught, component of making science impactful: the elephant in the room for commercialisation and innovation is you’re going to make a very select group of people quite rich if stuff is successful. But it's a trade-off to be able to medically help a lot of people. And it's something I’ve had to come to terms with. (Helen) … if you actually do actually want to help people, you need to commercialise. And if you’re not commercialising or figure out who's going to do it, then you’re not actually interested in helping those people that are in the clinic. So, a lot of people don’t have that viewpoint, but that's just the reason why I commercialise our material. (Peter)
While perspectives on commercialisation varied, a dominant theme was the inadequacy of Australian universities in supporting commercialisation. Participants pointed to systemic issues, such as risk aversion and a lack of entrepreneurial culture as well as structural issues regarding Australia's manufacturing capabilities: … Bluntly, there are two things which disadvantage the Australian research system, innate risk adverseness, and the tall poppy syndrome. […] So I would say that is a structural problem. (Dom) One of the problems in Australia is that our manufacturing is declining drastically. So in 1970, about 30% of GDP came from manufactured goods. We’re down to about 7% now. So three-quarters of our manufacturing has been destroyed in the last 50 years, and so we are just not manufacturing. And this is making it ever harder. Every year, it gets harder and harder when you suddenly say, “Let's manufacture this.” (Ellen)
Several participants emphasised the need for cultural and infrastructural changes within universities to better support commercialisation, including considerations of the careers of future scientists: So, our team is relatively large and we split it half. Half the team focuses on fundamental research, things we would use in 10, 15 years, and the other half focuses on things we can get into people's hand in two to three years… The reason we are having to split it that way is actually Australian systems. So if I were to put a researcher on a commercial project, it will impact the career with progress in a standard ARC scheme or academic progression. So it has to often be a big discussion with the researcher, “Is this what excites you and this is the risk you’re taking”. (Tim) Now, I am very much of the opinion the best models to do commercialisation is the Stanford model or the MIT model, which involves getting the science out of the university as quickly as possible. The longer it stays in the university, the more it will be strangled. (Dom)
The data reveals a complex and often fraught relationship between academia and industry in Australia, and perhaps beyond, shaped by conflicting values, systemic barriers, and differing visions of what science
Finding 4: Value-Driven vs Box-Ticking’ Approaches to ELSI
In our final theme, participants’ reflections on the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of their research revealed a tension between deeply held personal values and the ‘box-ticking’ ways in which ELSI engagement can happen in academic contexts. As outlined in the methods section, questions about ELSI were framed broadly and invited participants to describe how ethical, legal, and social considerations featured in their own work. Within this open framing, participants focused primarily on the ethical or value-based aspects of their practice, emphasising personal responsibility. Many expressed a strong, value-driven commitment to doing ‘good’ through their work, and reflected on how these commitments were rarely supported or formalised through institutional structures, remaining unevenly embedded within everyday scientific practices.
Several participants linked their ethical considerations to personal upbringing and intrinsic values, highlighting the role of individual responsibility in shaping research priorities. One participant reflected: I remember my parents also putting a big effort on receiving the best education. So yeah, I think those principles come from the very beginning, like you are here to do good and to really pass that along to those around you. Yeah, I will frame everything on the whole education that I have received from primary, high school, university, and my parents, of course, that frame me into really working towards something that support our surroundings, like really our community, that we are good people. [… ] But yeah, I think you create your principles and everything based on that education that you have received, and that's what I have been carrying along. (Gary) I like to think that certainly when I choose what I work on, I try to find the things which will have the potential for good impact and avoid working on things which I’m not so comfortable with. […] I prefer to be working on those sorts of things which help people. (Deborah) It's [considerations of ethics] informal. And it's partly from having a reasonably diverse research team. Usually, in these meetings, someone will bring up the topics of equity. Especially where there's the obvious potential for it having a negative impact, and there's an obvious way to mitigate that, we’ll build it into the project. (Gary) We embed this as values among the research team so that when they engage with people they keep reinforcing the importance of the equity and the accessibility. (Oliver)
However, such values-driven approaches were enabled, primarily, in strategic or high-level thinking, with participants acknowledging that the practicalities of day-to-day research often left little room for ethical reflection. As one participant noted: At the high-level strategic planning, yes [we consider ethics]. So if we’re doing a discovery project or we’re doing a grant application it's front and centre. What research do we want to pursue? Where do we see this making a difference? How can we actually create a key benefit? On the day-to-day level less so. It's more about completing, let's say, a milestone for a PhD student or finishing off a body of work. […] what we’re proposing to do has that embedded social impact, that embedded sustainability aspect in that. It's a bit idealised, you can’t always do it. But day-to-day, it's more the idea generation where it comes in, not in the practical things. (Geoff)
Many participants expressed scepticism about how funding bodies and universities encourage engagement with ELSI: you say, “Let's put social awareness and sustainability on top,” [of a grant application] and, of course, they will do that and they will put that in their title because it helps them get funding, but they don’t mean it at all. … everybody's quoting sustainability, yet with very, very, very little awareness. And so my biggest worry is it's a nice trend, but nobody's actually thinking about it. […] they will talk about sustainability and social sciences. And I’ll put them in the grant application, [… ] they end up not being accountable to the real world. (Dom) … your grants are still mainly reviewed by experts in the field. So, you’re still writing them mainly to convince these people that it's solid science. Yes, you need to write a little blurb at the end about the research priority and how it meets them, but that's just a figure of style. Anything can be squeezed to look like it's going to do something great (Helen)
Across the interviews, a spectrum of understandings and approaches to ELSI emerged, ranging from personal, values-driven commitments to more performative or procedural practices. The focus on personal ethics here reflects participants’ own framings rather than the analytic position of this study. This tension between value-driven and performative engagements with ELSI mirrors the broader themes identified across the findings: the disjuncture between an idealised vision of science as a driver of societal progress and the institutional realities of academic research. In this context, ELSI becomes a conceptual entry point for examining how earlier promissory imaginaries – particularly those associated with the social responsibilities of nanotechnology – have sedimented in the routines of academic science.
Discussion
As the data above demonstrates, there are deep tensions between the promissory ideals that once defined nanotechnology, the practical challenges of innovation, and the institutional pressures that shape academic and industry relationships. Approaching nanotechnology as a diagnostic site allows us to trace how these tensions materialise across scientific domains once speculative expectations become normalised within institutions. The four key themes examined illustrate how early speculative futures attached to emerging technoscience – visions of revolutionary breakthroughs, social transformation, and scientific progress – do not disappear, but become sedimented in institutional cultures, funding structures, and everyday research expectations.
Across the interviews, participants articulated a persistent view of science as a neutral and progressive force for societal benefit, aligning with sociotechnical imaginaries that have long positioned science as a driver of societal advancement. However, these idealised narratives often obscure the messy, contingent realities of research practice. The distinction between universities as spaces of curiosity-driven discovery and industry as sites of application and impact exemplifies this tension. The pressure on universities to demonstrate measurable ‘impact’ blur these boundaries. While participants continued to express attachment to the ideal of blue-sky research, institutional demands increasingly tether academic work to commercial, policy and market imperatives, challenging traditional notions of academic freedom and creativity. This analysis points to a shift from speculative promise to structured expectation: the institutionalisation of hype, where science is increasingly tasked with delivering measurable “impact” in competitive, resource-constrained environments.
These tensions are particularly evident in participants’ views on university-industry collaboration. While some saw industry partnerships as a vital avenue for achieving societal impact, others expressed concerns about the commodification of public research and the risks of private interests overshadowing academic integrity. Structural issues within the Australian research system, such as risk aversion, inadequate entrepreneurial support, and weak manufacturing capacity, further exacerbate these challenges. These reflections resonate with scholarship on the co-production of science and society (Wynne, 2007; Norström et al., 2020), and suggest that promissory imaginaries, once loosely held and speculative, become reshaped through institutional norms that reframe them as deliverables.
The findings on ELSI practices further reveal how the afterlife of technoscientific promise plays out in everyday research. While many participants expressed a commitment to ELSI, they described these as informal, value-driven practices grounded in personal ethics rather than embedded within formal frameworks (Evans & O’Riordan, 2017; Bainbridge & Roco, 2019). Participants reported including considerations of equity and sustainability in grant proposals, but also framed these efforts as somewhat administrative or performative, describing their commitments to ELSI as largely value-driven and disconnected from the practicalities of day-to-day research. This narrowing of ELSI to personal values reflects participants’ own understandings – and occasional misunderstandings – of its scope and purpose, pointing to the need for a more reflexive and integrated approach (Hansson & Persson, 2011; Goldenberg et al., 2019; Tien et al., 2025). Rather than treating ELSI as an add-on or a bureaucratic hurdle, it must firstly be more expansively understood by researchers and then woven into the fabric of research practice, influencing both strategic decisions and everyday actions. This requires not only institutional reform but also deeper cultural shifts within universities, funding bodies, and the broader scientific community.
However, better integration of ELSI into innovation systems is not the primary finding of this paper. Participants’ varied understandings of ELSI – ranging from deeply personal ethics to administrative compliance – reveal a broader structural pattern in technoscientific systems, where speculative ideals are transformed by the dynamics and routines of institutionalised research. Rather than viewing the gap between participants’ aspirations for ELSI and its implementations as a failure, we suggest it reflects the ways that speculative ideals become sedimented into institutional routines – transformed into expectations, metrics, and compliance frameworks that often lack the reflexivity and openness of the original promissory vision.
The movement from speculation to sedimentation is reinforced by shifting funding priorities that continually privilege emerging, promissory, and speculative frontiers. These funding cycles necessarily influence not only scientific research but also patterns of scholarly attention within STS and related humanities and social science fields, shaping how scholars engage with technoscientific practices as they transition from promissory to routine. Together, such dynamics highlight the need for renewed STS attention to the afterlife of technoscientific hype: to how once-speculative futures are operationalised over time, and how researchers come to inhabit the institutional and ethical consequences of past promises.
Conclusion
Speculative promises attached to emerging technologies do not disappear, but become routinised through funding structures, commercialisation pressures, and administrative frameworks. Using nanotechnology research within Australian universities as an illustrative case, we demonstrate how speculative futures become sedimented within institutional life, revealing a complex interplay between idealised visions of science, practical realities of innovation, and institutional pressures.
Scientists’ understandings of the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of their research offers a useful entry point for examining how promissory imaginaries sediment over time into expectations that must be continually interpreted, negotiated, and sometimes resisted. The findings suggest that ELSI operates less as a fixed framework than as a means of tracing how such commitments are taken up, reinterpreted, or bypassed within institutional settings. Calls for more robust and integrated frameworks that move beyond box-ticking exercises must therefore be situated within this broader context of constrained research environments and shifting academic priorities.
While scientists remain deeply committed to the ideals of societal benefit and ethical responsibility, these commitments are shaped and constrained by systemic challenges, including the pressures of commercialisation, the inadequacies of institutional infrastructure, and the routinisation of ELSI as a compliance task. By exploring the tensions between academia and industry, and between value-driven and administrative approaches to ethics, this analysis demonstrate how earlier promissory imaginaries associated with technoscientific innovation persist in institutional cultures long after the hype has faded. Universities emerge as contested spaces, still seen by many as sites of curiosity-driven discovery, but increasingly governed by market logics, performance metrics, and commercial expectations.
Taken together, the findings demonstrate how the ethical, institutional, and economic infrastructures of science are shaped by the enduring afterlife of technoscientific promises, which continue to influence practice long after their speculative peak. Attending to these dynamics underscores the need for STS scholars to critically examine not only the emergence of technologies and the way innovation unfolds, but also how these speculative promises become sedimented within research routines, and why it matters to revisit technologies like nanotechnology – not only at the height of their hype, but also in their institutional afterlives.
Ultimately, we argue that nanotechnology offers a compelling case study for STS to re-engage with temporal dynamics of promise and the institutionalisation of hype. As scholarly attention continues to move toward speculative frontiers such as AI and quantum computing, it is equally important to study how the futures promised by earlier technoscientific fields unfold over time, often in uneven, partial, and highly structured ways. In doing so, we can better understand how innovation is not only imagined and initiated, but how it is lived, constrained, and continually negotiated.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
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