LK11 Call for proposal

Call opens: Oct 1st, 2025
Call closes: Dec 15th, 2025

Submission Form: https://shorturl.at/QMsou

Main Theme: Research and Solidarity

The 11th Living Knowledge Conference, in the birthplace of the Solidarity movement, Gdansk, will appeal to everyone interested in supporting, facilitating, or doing community-driven, collaborative research, thereby fostering a ‘community of practice’ that welcomes both old and new friends. We look forward to hearing from both experienced and new, early-career researchers and practitioners working with community-based research, engaged research, or citizen science. 

Living Knowledge Conferences favour interaction over one-way presentations. There is ample time for discussions, workshops, and dilemma sessions. From this meeting of people and minds, we hope to create synergies that will benefit us all as well as the groups we represent and collaborate with. 

Within the overarching theme, “Research & Solidarity”, we call for proposals addressing any of these sub-themes:

1. Foundations of Research Solidarity

Exploring the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings of solidarity in research

  • Defining solidarity in research contexts: bottom-up vs. top-down approaches
  • Epistemologies of engagement: integrating different knowledge systems
  • From theory to praxis: translating solidarity concepts into research practice
  • Critical perspectives on collaborative knowledge production

2. Fostering University-Community Solidarity

Building and sustaining collaborative relationships between academic institutions and communities

  • Solidarity models of university-community engagement
  • Good practices of partnerships and lessons learned from partnership failures
  • The role of science shops and community-based research centers
  • Regional engagement and the potential of (international/regional/local) institutional alliances
  • Evidence-based approaches to community collaboration

3. Student Engagement and Learning Through Solidarity

The role of students in solidarity-based research and community engagement

  • Pedagogical approaches to solidarity-based learning
  • Meaningful student projects and collaborative research
  • Service-learning and volunteering: impacts on students and communities
  • Equitable learning partnerships with communities
  • Student activism and academic engagement

4. Global Networks and Transnational Solidarity

International cooperation, knowledge exchange, and solidarity across borders

  • North-South research partnerships and power dynamics
  • International networks of science shops and community-based research
  • Mutual learning across cultural and geographical boundaries
  • Global solidarity movements and research collaboration
  • Decolonizing research practices

5. Environmental Justice and Planetary Solidarity

Research solidarity in addressing environmental challenges and climate change

  • Community-based environmental research and monitoring
  • Climate change responses rooted in solidarity
  • Environmental injustice and collective action research
  • Indigenous knowledge and environmental protection
  • Participatory approaches to sustainability research

6. Health, Solidarity and Community Wellbeing

Solidarity-based approaches to health research and community health initiatives

  • Community-based participatory health research
  • Health disparities and social justice research
  • Traditional and complementary medicine/care systems
  • Mental health and community support networks
  • Building solidarity: community resilience

7. Ethics, Power, and Dilemmas in Solidarity-based Research

Navigating the complex ethical landscape of solidarity-based research

  • Academic neutrality vs. activist engagement: finding balance
  • Power dynamics in participatory research
  • Political and funding influences on research solidarity and independence
  • Polarization as a threat to solidarity
  • Safety and security considerations for researchers and communities
  • Ethical frameworks for research solidarity
  • Different knowledge systems: hierarchy or equity – confrontation or reconciliation?

8. Methods and Approaches to Studying Solidarity

Innovative methodologies for researching solidarity, engagement, and collective action

  • Sociological, psychological, and political dimensions of solidarity research
  • Participatory and collaborative research methodologies
  • Measuring impact and outcomes of solidarity-based research
  • Mixed-methods approaches to community research

For each sub-theme, consider addressing:

  • How your work contributes to understanding or practicing research solidarity
  • What challenges you encountered and how you addressed them
  • Implications for future research and practice
  • Lessons that could benefit other researchers and practitioners

Cross-cutting considerations welcome:

  • Proposals that bridge multiple themes are encouraged
  • Interdisciplinary approaches are particularly valued
  • Both successes and failures offer valuable learning opportunities

How can you contribute? 

We are open to a broad range of inputs, so please consider how you would like to share your knowledge, experience, reflections, and challenges with our community, and how you could actively involve participants. We encourage creative formats ranging from classic research presentations to workshops and performances, where art and research are combined and participants are involved.

To maximise the opportunities for people to present and interact, a range of formats are available. Priority will be given to proposals that have a strong interactive element whereby participants and presenters have an opportunity through dialogue or other interactive methods to learn, share, exchange, and develop their ideas, expertise, and practices. An often-heard critique in conference evaluations is the lack of opportunity to interact and participate. Too much time is spent on one-way presentations. Therefore, please ensure that there is an opportunity for active participation!

The presentation formats range from ultrashort sharing, such as the the 5-minute Exposé (with the possibility for dialogue afterwards), to workshops of 45 to 90 minutes. Poster presentations are a good way of entering into in-depth conversations with those specifically interested in your work. 

Formats

  • Posters: The poster presentation is easily the most interactive session type, allowing for in-depth conversations on topics that appeal to you. Presenters will be able to answer questions about the posters and provide further details and context.
  • Research Presentations demonstrate theoretical underpinning and original research, in 10 minutes of speaking time. The session chair decides on how the Q&A will be organized. This could be 5 minutes after each presentation, with some more general discussion at the end of the session. 
  • 5-minute pitch: Speakers have 5 minutes speaking time; if there are 5 speakers in a 60-minute session, this leaves about 30 minutes for people to have follow-up discussions with the presenters. These 5-minute exposés are suitable for individuals to describe, demonstrate, and/or evaluate specific practices and new ideas and work in progress on a research topic or practice. This can include ideas under development or that have yet to be implemented or need partners.
  • Story Telling Sessions: During this session speakers can share a genuine and authentic experience of a team or community experience. Suggested time is 20 minutes for the story. Joint sessions that include perspectives from a community and researcher or other type of partnerships are encouraged. A story should also describe the challenges that were faced and overcome. There should be a short Q&A (10 min) afterwards.
  • Workshops: This session can be 20, 45 or 90 minutes long and should provide a highly interactive space for exploration and further development of theories or practice. For example, organizers can present on the development of a certain tool or methodology and invite participants to further develop it, or want to discuss with them how to improve current practice develop a strategy. Types of workshops include:
    • Skills-training workshops will help participants develop a specific skill, involving interaction and practice.
    • Problem-solving workshops or living labs provide an opportunity to explore challenges, difficulties, and problems encountered during the presented cases. Presenters not only bring their cases but also design a highly interactive method to engage participants and to work on the problem.
  • Arts-based sessions: These sessions encourage the use interactive formats and the reflection of different research methods such as design games, film, poetry, artwork, podcasting photo-voice, and video.  , etc.
  • Full sessions, panels, and round-tables discuss a central theme from various angles.

More detailed information on the different formats can be found here 

Evaluation criteria of the proposals

  • Relevance to the conference theme
  • Clarity of the submitted abstract
  • Novelty of the submitted idea/topic/work
  • (Potential) impact of the work (on society and/or research)
  • Level of collaboration and engagement in the presented case
  • Level of interaction with conference participants (for full sessions, panels/round-tables, arts-based, and workshop formats)

Your description will help reviewers make an informed evaluation of your proposal, and allows the organising committee to create the conference programme. In the submission form, select 1 theme that best fits your submission.

Reviewers can accept or reject the proposals, or they can advise the participants to focus on certain aspects of the submitted work, or switch to another format. The organising committee will then check the outcome of the review process with the available time-slots and conference rooms and inform you about the decision. 

Please note that there will be a limited number of 90-minute time slots available.

Before the conference, you may be approached by a session chair, whose task it is to give shape to the session and turn it into a coherent event. By then, it will also be possible to upload a full version of your presentation, if you wish to do so.