Date & Time
30 September 2026, 14:00 – 15:30
Room
Galapagos
Chaired by
Heleen Vreugdenhil
Expert Innovation Processes, DELTARES
Heleen Vreugdenhil
Expert Innovation Processes, DELTARESDr. Heleen Vreugdenhil is an expert in innovation processes in water and environmental management. She earned her PhD from Delft University of Technology based on pilot projects in water management and specialises in designing, managing, and implementing innovations in complex multi-stakeholder settings such as river and coastal areas. Her work focuses on co-creation, knowledge management, and scaling innovations from pilot projects to full implementation and institutionalisation, with a strong emphasis on bridging science and policy to maximise impact. Her experience spans coastal restoration, river management, sustainable ports, offshore wind farms, nature-based solutions (NbS), business models for water landscapes, and operational river management pilots. She has led and supported projects on financing and institutionalising NbS, sustainability assessments, knowledge management, plastic removal, erosion prevention, and automated monitoring. Heleen holds a dual appointment at Deltares and TU Delft, connecting academic research with practical implementation. She teaches the Master’s course Building with Nature and Beyond and supervises PhD and MSc students. She is also active in the Netherlands Centre of River Studies (NCR), the European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL), and serves on the editorial team of the International Journal of Water Governance. Her ambition is to strengthen collaboration between academia and practice to increase the impact of innovation in water management.
Type of Session
Research Session
Description
Following a rigorous evaluation process, the OLLD26 evaluation committee has accepted the research papers for this year’s conference. All accepted papers engage with the conference theme, “Living Labs Impacts and Values for a Changing World,” and have been classified into five sub-tracks:
- Track 1: Living Labs for Grand Societal Challenges
- Track 2: Living Labs for Policies, Governance, Collaboration, and Innovation Ecosystems
- Track 3: Living Labs for Inclusive Soci(et)al Engagement
- Track 4: Living Labs for Business and Emerging Technology
- Track 5: Living Labs Operations, Methods, Tools, and Impact
Papers selected by the Evaluation Committee
- Olivestone retreat: Designing a connected rural Living Lab cluster for regenerative agritourism, heritage and ecosystem monitoring
- From farm to family: A five-country Living Lab federation as constitutive infrastructure for One Health Microbiome Science in the OneHealthOme Project
- Co-creating urban climate futures: Comparative insights from vision development exercises in seven CARMINE Living Labs
- Integrating the natural environment into Living Lab innovation processes: A Delphi-based approach to bioregional criteria validation
- CivicDesign4HER Living Labs: A systemic co-C-creation approach to strengthening the civic engagement of migrant women
- Co-creating responses to youth loneliness through community spaces: A Living Lab approach in Madrid
Olivestone retreat: Designing a connected rural Living Lab cluster for regenerative agritourism, heritage and ecosystem monitoring
Abstract:
Living Labs (LLs) provide a practical way to co-create, trial, and evaluate innovations in real-life settings, but most guidance is tailored to urban, project-driven contexts. Small rural hospitality sites must integrate experimentation with daily operations while caring for heritage assets and managing environmental risks.
This paper presents a design blueprint for Olivestone Retreat (Kentrika Tzoumerka, Greece) as a connected rural living lab cluster comprising seven interlinked micro-labs: agritourism, stone buildings, olive grove, river corridor, heritage landscape, walking paths, and forest. Grounded in living lab theory, place-based innovation, and design science and action research, the blueprint translates the concept into an actionable operating model: a “7+1” architecture (seven micro-labs plus a shared governance–data–learning backbone), clear roles and decision rights, lightweight monitoring protocols, and a staged evaluation framework suitable for multi-season learning.
The empirical status is deliberately bounded: this paper reports implementation-ready design artefacts derived from site documentation, the project concept, and a literature synthesis; it does not report completed pilots, stakeholder co-design data, sensor datasets, or measured impacts. Its contribution is therefore a design proposition for rural SMEs whose usefulness and transferability must be tested through the planned implementation and longitudinal evaluation.
Fotios Konstantinidis
Coordinator, Olivestone Living Lab
Fotios Konstantinidis
Coordinator, Olivestone Living LabDr Fotios K. Konstantinidis works at the intersection of advanced technology, rural regeneration and real-world experimentation. He holds a PhD in Smart Manufacturing, an MSc in Mechatronics and Systems Automation, and an MEng in Electrical and Computer Engineering. As Coordinator of Olivestone Living Lab in Central Tzoumerka, Greece, he is shaping a 7+1 model connecting agritourism, stone buildings, olive cultivation, river ecology, heritage landscapes, walking routes and forest resilience. Its shared backbone supports co-creation, data stewardship, safety, learning and evaluation. Fotios is also Division Leader for Intelligent Industrial Manufacturing Systems at the I-SENSE Group of ICCS. He directs more than 20 researchers, engineers and project managers across various European projects, driving the journey from idea to product through design, prototyping, validation, demonstration and launch. At CogniSensus, he leads selected technologies towards commercial application. His experience brings scientific rigour, product thinking and ecosystem leadership to the rural setting. Expertise in artificial intelligence, sensing, robotics, immersive environments and data systems supports practical pilots grounded in local priorities. His participation in the European Commission’s Industry 5.0 Community of Practice and alignment with the New European Bauhaus reinforce a human-centred, resilient and inclusive approach. With more than 1,000 research citations, Fotios brings recognised academic expertise and real-world delivery experience to OLLD26, where he presents a practical pathway for regenerative rural transformation.
From farm to family: A five-country Living Lab federation as constitutive infrastructure for One Health Microbiome Science in the OneHealthOme Project
Abstract:
Microbiome research is dominated by single-compartment studies that rarely translate into community-relevant action. The OneHealthOme Horizon Europe Innovation Action embeds cross-ecosystem multi-omics research in a transnational federation of five Living Labs, anchored by an accredited ENoLL Member One Health Open Innovation Living Lab. Living Labs here are constitutive infrastructure: the means by which food, household, environmental and human compartments are jointly sampled and interpreted, and by which researchers, families, producers and policymakers co-produce evidence.
We present a family-based multi-season cohort with a randomised Farm-to-Fork basket intervention, governed by a federated dual-level pipeline and pre-registered causal-inference analytics, and alignment with SOILL, the ENoLL-coordinated support structure for Mission Soil Living Labs, extending Farm-to-Family upstream to soil.
Rodolfo Sardone
Director Research, Innovation and Technology Transfer, Local Health Authority of Taranto (ASL Taranto)
Rodolfo Sardone
Director Research, Innovation and Technology Transfer, Local Health Authority of Taranto (ASL Taranto)Rodolfo Sardone is a public health practitioner and epidemiologist, Director of the Unit of Research, Innovation and Technology Transfer at the Local Health Authority of Taranto (ASL Taranto), Italy, and affiliated with the Institute of Life Course and Medical Sciences, University of Liverpool. He is Principal Investigator of the research portfolio hosted by the Urban Health Center in Taranto, including CALLIOPE – One Health Open Innovation Living Lab (accredited ENoLL Member). His work connects population health surveillance, environmental exposures and One Health microbiome science with participatory, Living Lab–based models of evidence co-production and policy translation.
Co-creating urban climate futures: Comparative insights from vision development exercises in seven CARMINE Living Labs
Abstract:
Climate adaptation in metropolitan regions increasingly requires participatory and systemic approaches capable of addressing interconnected environmental and social challenges.
This paper examines how Living Lab methodologies and a System Innovation Approach support the co-creation of long-term climate resilience visions through participatory visioning exercises. Drawing on seven CARMINE Living Lab case studies – Athens, Barcelona, Birmingham, Bologna, Brașov, Leipzig, and Prague – the study comparatively analyses stakeholder-developed future visions addressing diverse climate risks, including extreme heat, wildfire, social vulnerability, and urban infrastructure pressures. The findings show that participatory visioning enables stakeholders to translate local climate risks into holistic and place-based resilience narratives integrating environmental, social, technological, and governance dimensions.
Despite important contextual differences, common priorities emerged across the cases, including nature-based solutions, integrated governance, public health and wellbeing, social inclusion, and evidence-based planning. The paper contributes to the literature on sustainability transitions and participatory climate governance by demonstrating how Living Labs can support transformative and socially legitimate climate adaptation pathways across multiple metropolitan contexts.
Lydia Papadaki
Researcher, Alliance of Excellence for Research and Innovation on Aephoria (AE4RIA)
Lydia Papadaki
Researcher, Alliance of Excellence for Research and Innovation on Aephoria (AE4RIA)Dr Lydia Papadaki holds a PhD in Economics from the Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB) with a scholarship from the Academy of Athens, and is a researcher at the Alliance of Excellence for Research and Innovation on Aephoria (AE4RIA). She has contributed to more than 20 European research and innovation projects funded under Horizon Europe, Horizon 2020, Erasmus+, EIT Climate-KIC, and other international programmes. Her research lies at the intersection of environmental and behavioural economics, systems innovation, stakeholder engagement, and sustainability transitions, with a particular focus on the sustainable blue economy, participatory governance, living labs, climate resilience, circular economy, and science-policy interfaces. Her recent work has advanced methodological approaches for participatory workshop design, systems innovation, and innovation ecosystems, supporting evidence-based policymaking and regional sustainability transitions. Dr Papadaki has authored numerous publications in leading international journals and edited volumes, including Annual Review of Resource Economics, Ocean & Coastal Management, Frontiers, Ocean and Society, Open Research Europe, Springer, and Journal of the Knowledge Economy. Her research has received international recognition, including selection among the Top 6 papers at the Open Living Labs Days (OLLD 2023) and the Young Scientist Award (2025). Beyond that, she has organised and facilitated more than 70 participatory workshops and stakeholder engagement processes across Europe and the Mediterranean, while delivering university lectures, professional training programmes, and capacity-building activities for policymakers, businesses, researchers, and civil society. She regularly serves as an invited reviewer for international scientific journals, contributes to sustainability education and innovation acceleration programmes, and mentors startups and entrepreneurs working on climate and sustainability challenges.
Integrating the natural environment into Living Lab innovation processes: A Delphi-based approach to bioregional criteria validation
Abstract:
Living Labs are widely recognised as collaborative innovation ecosystems structured around the Quadruple Helix model, bringing together academia, industry, government, and civil society. Yet, as Living Labs are increasingly mobilised to address grand societal challenges, including biodiversity loss and natural resource management, their predominantly socio-technical framing reveals a structural blind spot: the natural environment, conceptualised as the Quintuple Helix of Innovation, remains largely absent from their operational frameworks and validation processes. This research-in-progress paper addresses this gap in the context of an ongoing project developing a criteria framework for qualifying bioregional projects, constructed through a literature review and a practitioner workshop. A Delphi consultation constitutes the third validation stage and the core contribution of this paper. We argue that deliberately structuring the Delphi expert panel to represent all five helixes constitutes a concrete step toward operationalizing the Quintuple Helix in Living Lab validation processes. This work contributes a transferable methodological pathway grounded in a rural Living Lab engaged in ecological transition and advances the theoretical framing of bioregional Living Labs as a distinct category of innovation ecosystem oriented toward the Quintuple Helix.
Juliette Focki
Designer & PhD student
Juliette Focki
Designer & PhD studentJuliette Focki is a designer and a 2nd year PhD student working on bioregional design. She is affiliated with the ERPI Laboratory (Université de Lorraine) and the CRD (ENS Paris-Saclay/ ENSCI les Ateliers). A graduate of École Boulle (Paris) and ENSAD Nancy, she carries out her research-action at La Vigotte Lab, a rural third place located in the Parc Naturel Régional des Ballons des Vosges (France - 88). She develops bioregional design as a framework where the designer acts as a reinhabitant, someone who commits to and is shaped by a place, rather than simply intervening in it.
CivicDesign4HER Living Labs: A systemic co-C-creation approach to strengthening the civic engagement of migrant women
Abstract:
Migrant women’s civic participation is constrained by a set of interrelated factors, including limited access to information, language and communication barriers, under-representation, socio-cultural constraints and unequal power relations. Many existing efforts to strengthen civic engagement have relied on fragmented, short-term measures that cannot address the systemic and structural nature of marginalisation. In response, CivicDesign4HER proposes a Living Lab approach to strengthening migrant women’s civic participation through participation, systems thinking and co-creation.
This paper sets out the conceptual and methodological foundations of the CivicDesign4HER Living Labs. These labs operate as local learning environments in which migrant women and other stakeholders examine civic problems and design responses to them. The methodology draws on systemic design, participatory civic education, adult learning and inclusive facilitation, and moves through four connected phases — explore, reframe, create and catalyse — that support reflection, collective meaning-making, experimentation and sustained civic engagement.
The paper presents the methodological framework, the facilitation strategies designed to address power asymmetries between migrant women and institutional stakeholders, and the evaluation strategy for the pilot Living Labs, before outlining the expected contributions of the project.
Stefania Savva
Director of Research, SYNTHESIS Center for Research and Education
Stefania Savva
Director of Research, SYNTHESIS Center for Research and EducationDr Stefania Savva is a Belgium-based interdisciplinary researcher and Director of Research at SYNTHESIS Center for Research and Education, a VET accredited research institution, and The Hub Nicosia, a non profit educational NGO. She holds a Postdoc in museum-school sustainable synergies (cofunded by the EU and the Cyprus Research Foundation under DIDAKTOR programme, 2020), a PhD in Museum, Gallery and Heritage Studies (University of Leicester, 2016), an MA in Art, Craft and Design Education (Roehampton, 2009), and a BA in Primary Education (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 2008). Her research spans inclusive education, cultural heritage education, digital pedagogy, social innovation and design for social change. Her doctoral work on museum–school partnerships and multiliteracies led to frameworks including Museum Multiliteracies Practice, the Living Museum Partnership and Multiliteracies Performance Assessment Zones. She later introduced Entrepreneurial Cultural Affinity Spaces. Recent work covers inclusive STEM education, disability inclusion in the GLAM sector, living labs for participatory action research and civic engagement, sustainability education and post-digital cultural futures for gender equality and empowerment. She has independently authored more than ten successfully funded European research proposals.
Valeria Ianilli
Full Professor, Politecnico di Milano
Valeria Ianilli
Full Professor, Politecnico di MilanoValeria M. Iannilli is Full Professor at the Department of Design, Politecnico di Milano, where she is a member of the School of Design. She is co-founder, together with Alessandra Spagnoli, of the Retail Experience Lab research group and of the Fashion & Textile Living Lab “Too Cool to Go Wasted,” where she serves as Scientific Director. Her research focuses on living labs as real-life experimentation environments and infrastructures for open innovation, co-creation, and transformative learning, as well as on consumption ecosystems and retailing as strategic contexts for sustainability transitions. In this framework, she leads research activities on the Su.Re (Sustainable Retail) platform, investigating how design-driven approaches can enable sustainable and circular consumption systems in fashion through stakeholder engagement, behavioural change, and product-service systems. Through these activities, she contributes to building collaborative ecosystems that support the adoption and scaling of circular practices across the fashion value chain.
Co-creating responses to youth loneliness through community spaces: A Living Lab approach in Madrid
Abstract:
Youth loneliness is an increasingly complex societal challenge affecting wellbeing, mental health, participation, and community life. This paper presents SOLIBCM, a participatory research project in the Community of Madrid that examines how university students experience loneliness in relation to public and community spaces, with particular attention to public libraries. The project adopts a Living Lab methodology, understood as a space for co-creation and community mediation.
The research combines survey data on loneliness and the use of community spaces, 17 interviews with professionals from libraries, NGOs, health centres, and youth services, as well as upcoming focus groups with young people. These findings will support the co-creation of situated prototypes aimed at fostering social connection. SOLIBCM brings together young people, researchers, libraries, health and youth professionals, NGOs, and local public actors through a collaborative Quadruple Helix approach.
The paper contributes in three ways: it frames youth loneliness as a community-based societal challenge, demonstrates how Living Labs can transform experiences and local knowledge into co-created solutions, and highlights the relational value generated through the process itself, including trust-building, collaboration, visibility, and shared ownership.
Lisandra Otero Borges
PhD Candidate, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
Lisandra Otero Borges
PhD Candidate, Universidad Carlos III de MadridLisandra is a Ph.D. Candidate in Documentation at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, funded by a pre-doctoral research scholarship from the Community of Madrid. Her doctoral research focuses on GIS-based services in European academic libraries and Spatial Humanities. She holds a Master's degree in Documentation, Libraries, and Archives from the University of Alcalá and a Bachelor's degree in Information Sciences from the University of Havana, where she graduated with honors. She has prior experience as a university lecturer at the University of Havana and as an information architecture and UX consultant. She is currently a member of the Acrópolis research group at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, with broader research interests spanning geospatial data management, user experience, and digital humanities infrastructure.