TECHNIS is pleased to invite you to a free webinar. TECHNIS webinars focus on recent legal, economic, managerial, ethical and policy issues related to technological innovation. Our approach is interdisciplinary and presentations are given by experts in different fields such as economics, law, management, STS, sociology, anthropology and philosophy. Webinar presentations last for 20min and are followed by a 40min discussion.

Please join us for a webinar on Tuesday the 17th of February 2026 at 11:00 London time i.e. 12:00 Brussels time, 13:00 Athens time. The speaker is David Demortain, INRAE. The title of the talk is "Industrial strategies in regulatory science. How the agrochemical industry de-risks innovation" .

This webinar is free and open to all. The moderator is Dr. Andreas Panagopoulos. 

Join Zoom Meeting: https://uoc-gr.zoom.us/j/84642993639?pwd=4mpCWh3kXwL7TeODcCa7UZ9cKEbbYU.1

Meeting ID: 846 4299 3639
Passcode: 532636

Abstract: Regulatory science is the name given to the knowledge of regulated products, their risks, benefits, and the multiple methods by which these properties can be ascertained for the benefits of the public and for regulatory bodies. It is an increasingly disputed area of knowledge, involving industrial, academic, administrative as well as NGO actors. The weight of regulated industries in the shaping of regulatory science - or regulatory knowledge - is supposedly large, as agnotological research has amply documented in the past twenty years. Firms detain a large share of the testing capacities, but also effectively deploy long term strategies to shape the norms of knowledge in this area. The talk will approach the epistemic strategies of the agrochemical industry regarding regulatory science, shedding light on the strategies for registration of its products, that it has articulated under the name of derisking

Short Bio: David Demortain is a senior social scientist of INRAE, France, currently with the Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire Sciences Innovations Sociétés (LISIS). He works on the relations between science, knowledge and governance, specifically in the area of regulation and governance of risks. He has published on international invisible colleges of experts and their influence on international risk regimes, on the making of expert bodies and organization of the science/policy interface, or on the politics of regulatory science and regulatory toxicology. He is the author of three books, lastly The Science of Bureaucracy (MIT Press 2020), a history of the modes of rational, risk-based decision-making at the US EPA.