The second SEAS Summer School was held virtually in BBB form 27-28 September 2021. It welcomed doctoral candidates working in the field of computer science, social sciences, philosophy, psychology and law with some priority given to applicants researching one or more of the safety-critical domains (mobility, energy and health care) and/or the three explanatory dimensions of SEAS (acceptance, cooperation and governance).The programme (see programme below) consisted of sessions focusing on:

• intensively discussing current conceptual and methodological concerns of all involved PhD projects with international peers of their field;
• learning from the experiences of senior researchers by gaining insights into their actual research processes;
• broaden the understanding of different theoretical and methodological approaches in researching the social embeddedness of digitalization and Autonomous Cyber Physical Systems (ACPS) by actively engaging with the variety of participants’ foci.

The summer school follows the format of “peer supervision”: All participants introduce their PhD projects during an ice-breaker session and pose 1-2 conceptual or methodological questions from their PhD project. Each participant is then intensively consulted on the submitted question(s) by 3-4 other participants for up to one hour. The aim of this highly interactive format is to provide in-depth and concrete feedback to pressing issues in every participant’s PhD project and a space for mutual learning. At the end of the workshop, the rapporteurs try to synthesise the challenges and solutions from the consulting sessions.