2020-2030 | Stadsacademie: collaboratorium for urban sustainability issues in Ghent

RUNNING FROM 2020 TO 2030
FUNDED BY UGENT - IDC
CDO RESEARCHERS: CHARLOTTE PROVÉ, THOMAS BLOCK, GERT GOEMINNE, KASPER AMPE, CASPER COGEN & MAARTEN CRIVITS

The Stadsacademie, founded in 2017, is an inter- and transdisciplinary consortium based in Ghent (Belgium) that functions as a collective learning platform or ‘collaboratory’ for the exploration and investigation of complex socio-ecological urban issues that profoundly shape the urban fabric. These challenges are framed as ‘wicked problems’ characterized by uncertainty about the forms of knowledge and expertise required, by political contestation due to the inevitable inclusion and exclusion of particular assumptions and values, and by the ongoing negotiation over which actors and knowledge systems should be involved. The range of issues addressed within the Stadsacademie is broad, encompassing just energy transitions, neighbourhood-based food infrastructures, public land use, care and housing, urban regeneration, circularity, mobility, and more.

As a platform, the Stadsacademie responds to the growing call for universities to more actively engage with their urban environment, and to critically examine their own institutional roles and practices within that context. Over the years, the Stadsacademie has demonstrated the value of a place-based approach: by focusing on the specific context of Ghent and working on concrete urban places, it becomes possible to relate local challenges to other scales, while engaging with existing and concrete tensions, networks, institutional arrangements and infrastructures.

The Stadsacademie operates through inter- and transdisciplinary collaborations, forming teams that bring together academic actors (students, professors, researchers from Ghent University and other higher education institutions) and urban actors (policy makers, civic institutions and organizations, citizen collectives, and private companies). Through collective dialogues, shared matters of concern are identified, research questions are formulated, cases are selected, and activities are co-organized. The platform actively seeks synergies between research, education, and societal engagement, employing a range of methods across research projects, academic courses, public debates, exhibitions, summer schools, publications, and more. One of the core formats of the Stadsacademie is the Master Thesis Atelier (MTA). An MTA is a year-long collaborative trajectory in which 5 to 10 master's students and their supervisors from different disciplinary backgrounds jointly explore a specific issue in close collaboration with non-academic actors.

The Stadsacademie experiments with new forms of knowledge production that have little in common with traditional project or consultancy logics. Rather than working toward predefined outcomes, the platform embraces open-ended trajectories, allowing for unexpected detours and turns. As such, the Stadsacademie is not a knowledge or expertise centre on, for instance, circularity or energy transitions, nor does it function as a consultant executing assignments on behalf of the city or other stakeholders. Its core mission lies in co-creating deep engagements with complex issues, focusing on agenda-setting, politicisation and potentially fostering institutional or policy transformations. Alternative future imaginaries and transformative practices are thus opened up, with the principles of socio-ecological justice at their core.

Since 2020, the Stadsacademie has been structurally supported as an interdisciplinary consortium by Ghent University, which includes financial resources for a full-time coordinator working closely with an interdisciplinary core team responsible for the platform's day-to-day management. The broader community involved in Stadsacademie activities comprises over one hundred active participants.

More info (in Dutch): https://destadsacademie.be