Science Meets Society in the CIM Hub Marburg: New Spaces for Transdisciplinary Research and Sustainability Transformation

Addressing the complex challenges associated with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), often described as ‘wicked problems’, requires holistic societal change that also transforms knowledge production across research, education, and knowledge transfer. For universities, such far-reaching changes pose new challenges because of long-established organisational structures and regulations. Building dynamic networks within established, predominantly discipline-oriented knowledge systems is therefore central to addressing SDG-related challenges. In developing innovative solutions to these wicked problems within local knowledge ecosystems, the experiences and insights of actors outside universities are invaluable.

Living Labs, or Real-World Labs, have recently emerged as a promising organisational format for science to engage with society. They are characterised by a transdisciplinary and transformative approach that combines scientific research with contributions to societal change. In this way, they enable the combination of knowledge from diverse actors in academia, business, and society through collaborative processes that address socio-ecological challenges. Research on transformative approaches has highlighted beneficial synergies among actors and projects collaborating within Living Labs. Living Labs can employ a wide range of methods, and combinations of methods, in transdisciplinary ways. In doing so, they can also develop new methods that help initiate and implement context-sensitive, transformation-oriented projects. Given this complexity, systematic knowledge of these design processes remains limited. In particular, their potential to bridge the research-practice gap remains under-researched.

The CIM Hub, like other Living Labs, is therefore important not only for research on sustainability transformation but also as a new organisational format and learning environment in higher education. It enables students to acquire transformative competences relevant to the labour market and empowers them to become responsible agents in shaping a rapidly changing world. Transformative competences are also central to current discussions of future skills. Implementing transformative processes in the CIM Hub goes beyond merely adapting the curriculum. It involves establishing new infrastructure through physical and institutional anchor points within higher education. These new spaces for exploration and experimentation are needed to implement projects that translate theoretical knowledge about future skills into practice. This brings us back to the question: How can we create new spaces for interaction between actors inside and outside the academic system to foster sustainability transformation in local knowledge ecosystems? Our transformative research, supported by ongoing evaluation at different levels (individual, project, and community), demonstrates that the often-hidden micro-dynamics involved in initiating and implementing new socio-ecological projects within Living Labs can become institutionalised over time. In other words, short-term collaborative processes at the micro level can become embedded in longer-term structures at the level of the knowledge ecosystem (see above).