SLU Urban Futures seed funding: Living Labs

SLU Urban Futures offers funding for 3 projects for the amount of 50 000 SEK each. The seed funding is offered to support researchers establish Living Lab projects or develop a critical living lab approach to research. The funding must be used for transdisciplinary research, where SLU researchers collaborate with societal actors to develop novel approaches to urban sustainability challenges.  

Living labs refer to real-world, real-time, society-science interfaces that represent arenas for learning and knowledge co-creation. A critical living lab approach mobilizes these science-society collaborations as means to experiment with novel processes, actor-constellations and practices otherwise often impossible to set up in typical urban settings.  

Living Laboratories are diverse in scope and operations but share certain key characteristics: they contribute to urban transformation; experiments are a core research method; transdisciplinarity is a fundamental research mode; long-term orientation, scalability, and transferability of results are core aims; and learning through real-time reflexivity is a key objective. As such, living laboratories are a way that universities can contribute to a wider societal transition to sustainability. 

The call is intended to support activities for transdisciplinary collaboration on critical living lab projects; and the development of a research application within the academic year of 2024. You should identify a relevant call or funding body that fits the thematic focus of your living lab collaboration.