Knowledge and Innovation Srls (K&I)

Knowledge and Innovation (K&I) is a social research organisation based in Rome. Its members are social scientists that have been carrying out around 30 projects, along the last 20 years, in the frame of the EU DG research FP4, FP5, FP6, FP7 and H2020 on issues such as ecological responsibility and energy transition, environmental sustainability, socialisation of the scientific research, public engagement and responsible research and innovation (RRI); gender and science; societal issues related to natural and man-made hazards; privacy and security; poverty, social exclusion and social polarisation; etc. The mission of K&I is to increase the relevance and effectiveness of the social sciences to interpret the profound processes of change that are affecting contemporary societies, understanding how they are evolving, identifying connected societal stress and investigating available options and tools for their effective management. Energy-society relation is among the main focus areas of K&I. In this field K&I is engaged in research projects on the transition toward a low-carbon society, on energy and social innovation, on the processes of decarbonisation at territorial level, on the energy efficiency of SMEs. K&I carries out activities in Italy, Europe and worldwide, using an interdisciplinary approach. These activities include research, training and capacity building, networking and science communication, public engagement, consultancy, as well as the production of guidelines and other tools that can help setting new policies or to change existing ones. K&I has also been investigating gender relations in the wake of a growing demand for social equality in science and technology realms.

Besides participating in all the phases of the research, K&I is leading the work for the conceptual specification (WP1) of the multidimensional analytic framework to be adopted for studying the 13 coal and carbon-intensive regions in transition involved.