Living Places: Biographies, Community Histories and Participatory Research In Times of Transformation

Places are not merely geographical settings but historically changing fields of experience, memory, social relations, and collective action, shaped by social, economic, technological, and environmental transformations. Understanding these processes requires approaches connecting individual biographies, community histories, local practices, and broader structural conditions. This session explores how individuals and communities experience, interpret, narrate, and respond to transformations of the places they inhabit. Particular attention is given to the intersections between personal life histories, collective memories, changing landscapes, and grassroots agency. It examines how local actors negotiate continuity and change, respond to socio-environmental pressures, and participate in shaping alternative futures.

The session also addresses methodological challenges by bringing together biographical, narrative, ethnographic, community-based, collaborative, and participatory approaches, including Living Labs and other co-creative research formats. These approaches connect scientific inquiry with local knowledge and practical experience while raising questions about participation, unequal representation, competing interpretations, power relations, and collaborative knowledge production. Particular emphasis is placed on methodological strategies combining individual narratives, community histories, and diverse qualitative materials. Methodological triangulation and polyphonic analysis illuminate how different actors construct, contest, and negotiate meanings of place and its transformation.

Contributions may address changing localities, urban and rural landscapes, socio-environmental transformations, community memory, collective agency, grassroots initiatives, participatory governance, and related methodological challenges. Special attention is given to research connecting lived experiences and local histories with collaborative practices, social innovation, and the transformation of places and communities.