University Campus Living Labs: Unpacking Multiple Dimensions of an Emerging Phenomenon

Sophie Nyborg, Maja Horst, Cian O’Donovan, Gunter Bombaerts, Meiken Hansen, Makoto Takahashi, Gianluigi Viscusi, Bozena Ryszawska

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Universities and their changing role in society is a source of perennial debate. In this article, we examine the emergent phenomenon of University Campus Living Labs (UCLL), the set of practices by which universities use their own buildings, streets or energy infrastructure as experimental settings in order to support applied teaching, research and co-creation with society. While most existing studies of UCLLs focus on them as sustainability instruments, we explore the UCLL phenomenon from an open-ended and fresh angle. Using living labs in five European universities as exemplary cases, we demonstrate the breadth and variability of this emerging phenomenon through five analytical dimensions to unpack the multiple forms and purposes that UCLLs can have. We furthermore consider aspects of inclusiveness and situatedness of living lab co-creation and testing and what the UCLL phenomena may come to mean for the continuously changing university, calling for future studies to substantiate these aspects.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)60-81
JournalScience & Technology Studies
Volume13
Issue number1
Early online date15 Feb 2024
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2024
Externally publishedYes

Funding

The research presented in this paper is funded by the EU project ‘Scaling Up Co-creation - Avenues and Limits for Integrating Society in Science and Innovation’ (SCALINGS), H2020-SwafS-2016-17 under grant agreement 788359. We want to thank Mathieu Baudrin for his valuable ideas and comments to earlier versions of this article as well as Sebastian Pfotenhauer and the rest of the SCALINGS community for being an inspiration for this research.

FundersFunder number
European Commission788359

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    • SCALING

      Takahashi, M. (Project Researcher) & Pfotenhauer, S. (Principal Investigator)

      1/09/181/09/22

      Project: Research

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