Research seminar by Silviya Svejenova

Abstract: Frontier knowledge and technologies are often presented as products of scientific discovery and technical ingenuity, yet their societal significancedepends on more than science alone. To become meaningful, valuable, and legitimate, they must be interpreted, imagined, organized, and linked to existing institutions. This seminar examines art–science collaboration as a way of making frontier knowledge and technologies understandable and debatable. Science and art are distinct institutions: science privileges evidence, specialization, and reliable knowledge, while art brings imagination, equivocality, and affective engagement. When brought together, these differences can generate productive tensions between explanation and evocation, precision and ambiguity, utility and critique, and expert authority and public participation. Rather than treating art as a communication tool for science, I argue that art–science collaborations function as institutional infrastructures for inquiry, translation, and engagement. Using quantum science and technology as an example, I explore how the nexus of art and science can make frontier futures actionable in practices, markets, and public debate.

 

 

About Silviya Svejenova

 

Silviya Svejenova is Professor of Leadership and Innovation in the Department of Organization at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. She earned her PhD in Management from IESE Business School in Barcelona and has held academic positions across Europe, as well as SCANCOR visiting fellowships at Harvard and Stanford. Her research examines creativity, innovation, strategic leadership, and institutional renewal, particularly how novel ideas gain legitimacy and contribute to sustainable futures and place-based communities. Her work has been recognized with EGOS Book Award, runner-up for AOM George R. Terry Book Award, and Roland Calori Prize for best paper in Organization Studies (OS), etc. She has published widely in leading journals and co-authored books with Oxford and Cambridge. Silviya is Chair of the SCANCOR Board and OMT Division Chair-Elect at AOM. She has served as EGOS Chair, IFSAM VP Research, OS Senior Editor, and Academic Co-director of CBS Leadership Centre.