Events overview
REWORLDING events
REWORLDING Kickoff Event
The official REWORLDING Kickoff Event took place on October 9-10, 2024, in Hasselt, marking the launch of the project with a mix of closed consortium sessions and public discussions.
The first day was dedicated to internal workshops, co-organized with the Driving Urban Transitions (DUT) LISTEN project, including Mud and Gut, an exploratory session on how design can reveal and spark discussions around soil contamination. The second day opened up to the public, featuring inspiring lectures and a debate with Michel Bastian, Studio Plastique, and project supervisors, followed by a demonstration moment by the Doctoral Candidates (DCs).
This event introduced REWORLDING as a careful and situated Participatory Design approach, focusing on the synergies between human and more-than-human worlds. Through lectures, debates, and performative presentations, participants explored how ecological challenges are experienced differently across communities and organizations, often leading to societal polarization.
The summer school as part of the reworlding program will focus on the idea of reimagination. We will be hosted by ETH Newrope and use this occasion to experience a series of pedagogical and research experiments on developing and defining approaches for reimagination.
As a summer school we will take up different roles. Going from a mode of presenting to being guests in a design studio on reworlding, experimenting with own workshop formats and participating in a three days workshop where we explore imagination as a layered and collaborative practice rather than merely as an individualized faculty that allows us to conjure 'new worlds' in the theatre of our mind.
The summer school is preceded by a lecture and conversations series on landscapes and imagination and will allow to both present own work, take time to get to know each other and collectively explore new methods and tools.
The first part of the summer school will be organized in the Design in Dialogue Lab at the ETH where for the second part of the summer school we become part of different cultural organizations in Zürich.
In collaboration with:
The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Network “Reworlding”
The Social Pattern Recognition – SPaRe Lab of the Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento
Mapping, Representing, and Visualising Ethnographic Data
9 July 2025, 2:30-6:30 PM + 10 July 2025, 10:30-12:30 AM
University of Trento, Department of Sociology and Social Research
The pre-conference workshop provides an opportunity for Ph.D. students and junior post-docs engaged in ethnographic and qualitative research to discuss their work with colleagues and senior researchers in an interdisciplinary, informal and stimulating environment.
For this conference edition, the workshop focuses on the representation of ethnographic data and analysis, including complex networks of eco-social and power relations. Qualitative research generates rich, in-depth findings, yet it often fails to synthesise, visualise and formalise them. This reduces the potential impact, circulation, and re-use —across disciplinary communities, and beyond— of these analyses. Drawing on participants’ ongoing fieldwork and data communication challenges, the workshop aims to explore modalities, techniques, and artefacts for the wider use of ethnographic findings.
For more details on registration and the selection procedure, please visit the website:
Thursday 7th of May 2026 - 18h00 - 19h00
Kapittelzaal (house #2 / 1.4), @Beguinage in Hasselt
Institutions in Dialogue - Design & the Civic Economy
Martijn de Waal. Design & the civic economy.
Can we think of the economy and money as something that could be designed? In this talk Martijn will bring a perspective from media studies and design towards emerging economic practices such as urban commons that intend to strengthen relationships of care and planetary well-being rather than mere profit or efficiency. He will explore the design of media and technologies that could facilitate such systems, such as currencies, current-sees and rights-based tokens. Will such an approach enable local economies to take negative externalities into account, while rewarding practices of care? Or do we risk to 'transactionalize the social', rather than the reverse: designing economies that are relational and caring?
For the lecture please register via this form
Presentation of workshop results – Reworlding Spring School
More-than-human design, Living Lab @Beguinage
19:00 – end
Within the Reworlding project, a group of designers, artists and social scientists collaborate on projects that challenge governments, universities and cultural institutions to move beyond human-centred thinking and take the non-human seriously in addressing current climate challenges. This approach is often referred to as more-than-human design.
By working together with both human and non-human actors (such as trees, solar panels, etc.), it explores more sustainable economic models (e.g. cooperatives), energy transitions and water management.
During the Spring School, participants will engage with these ideas through a week of collective thinking and design. The outcomes of this process will be presented during Kunstennacht.
Wednesday 6th of May 2026 - 17u30-18u30
Kapittelzaal (house #2 / 1.4), Beguinage Hasselt
Institutions in Dialogue - Eco-social Change & Participatory Practice
Ann Light. Impact at Times of Change
As designers, we construct our problems as we set out to solve them. As changemakers, our culture’s assessment tools may represent aspects of life that we want to change. As practitioners, the world in which we begin our designs may have shifted by the time we are looking for evidence that our work was effective. This talk shares case studies from change projects where cultural and organisational shifts, both intended and incidental, shaped the doing. What mechanisms bridge between the world of dispassionate measurement and the reality of project-making on the ground?
Please register via this form
Tuesday 5th of May 2026 - 17u30-18u30
Kapittelzaal (house #2 / 1.4), Beguinage Hasselt
The Politics of Institutions - Democratic Innovation through Co-Design
Brian Dixon, Head of Belfast School of Art, Ulster University, Belfast. Co-Design as a Mediator in Governance: The potential of reconfiguring relations between publics, institutions and knowledge
This talk will explore the intersection of co-design and democratic innovation, focusing on how participatory design practices can shape and are shaped by contemporary governance contexts. Drawing on democratic theory and design research, I will reflect on questions of legitimacy, inclusion, deliberation and power in participatory governance. Two cases will be presented. One looking at a set of recent design proposals in the context of Scottish Participation Requests, where communities can request local authority consultation. Another looking at a design-led democratic mini-public undertaken in an island context in Northern Ireland. Attention will be directed to how artefacts, processes, and infrastructures enable or constrain democratic participation, with co-design positioned as a mediating practice that can reconfigure relationships between publics, institutions, and knowledge within policy and decision-making processes.
Please register via this form
The Reworlding Spring School will take place at UHasselt, at the historic Beguinage in Hasselt (Belgium), from 4 to 7 May 2026. This 4-day intensive programme brings together researchers, practitioners and students to explore the role of re-institutioning in socio-environmental transitions.
Through this lens, we examine how institutions can be rethought and reshaped in times of ongoing socio-environmental crises. The programme focuses on the relationships between communities, institutions and more-than-human actors, and explores new forms of inclusive and collaborative governance.
The Spring School is structured around three thematic lenses:
- Politics of Institutions
Exploring power dynamics and roles within institutional change
- Embodied Institutions
Understanding how institutions are experienced and lived
- Institutions in Dialogue
Examining how communities and institutions engage with one another
These themes are explored through keynote lectures, workshops and interactive sessions, allowing participants to engage with different perspectives and contribute their own insights.
Practical information
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- Dates: 4–7 May 2026
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- Location: UHasselt, Beguinage, Hasselt (Belgium)
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- Format: lectures, workshops and collective discussions
Keynote lectures can also be attended individually. More information and registration per lecture can be found bellow via the dedicated event pages.
Retracing lectures series
The Retracing Lecture Series is a structured program of three integrated courses, combining key lectures and workshops to explore academic skills and theoretical frameworks within reworlding. This series challenges the limitations of traditional European Participatory Design (PD) methodologies and examines how they can be expanded to better address today's complex socio-ecological challenges. By engaging diverse perspectives, we develop new ways of perceiving and acting in the world. The series is led by UL in collaboration with AAU, MAU, UH and UNITN. After completion students are rewarded with 2 ECTS.
Giving a Voice to Nature.
During the Participatory Design Conference 2024 (PDC2024), the REWORLDING workshop, titled “Giving a Voice to Nature: Participatory Design with Non-Human Stakeholders for Sustainable Development”, brought together all DCs and external researchers. Participants contributed 1,000-word pieces, serving as the foundation for building a research network and sparking discussions on reworlding.
The workshop explored how to design with non-human natural entities, challenging the traditional human-centered approach in participatory design. It addressed the often-overlooked need to involve these entities in the design process, particularly in the context of sustainable development. Through collaborative debate and reflection, participants examined new ways of integrating nature as an active stakeholder in design.
Ethics in Participatory Research and Design
Open Science in Participatory Research
This workshop explored Open Science within Participatory Design (PD), focusing on the FAIR data principles—Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. Open Science within the European framework aims to make research and data widely accessible, fostering transparency, collaboration, and inclusivity.
Participants learned how inclusive (digital) data collection and comprehensive Data Management Plans (DMPs) ensure data integrity and accessibility, enhancing research quality. In PD, involving stakeholders in data collection strengthens engagement, making the process more impactful. Through hands-on exercises and real-world case studies, participants gained practical experience, enriching research outcomes while developing essential collaboration and problem-solving skills.
Led by prof. Liesbeth Huybrechts
Reconnecting Methods Training
The Reconnecting Methods Training provides Doctoral Candidates (DCs) with valuable insights into Participatory Action Research (PAR), situated design, and co-design methods, alongside skills in academic writing, communication, and community engagement. The training focuses on participatory design, PAR, and design anthropology/ethnography, with hands-on experience in relational design using translation objects in collaboration with non-academic partners.
DCs will engage in sessions on mutual and collective learning, co-design, and prototyping, followed by workshops using the Participation Studio methodology. The program emphasizes connecting academic research with socio-environmental contexts through scientific communication and community engagement. Additionally, DCs will explore topics such as academic writing, interdisciplinary alliances, research valorisation, and public science.
PAR, ethnography and multivocality
Interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral alliances
Mutual, embodied and collective learning in PD
Codesign and Prototyping More-Than-Human Futures
Academic Writing and Communication
Research valorisation, ethics and public science
Reimagining Summer School in ETH Zurich
Expanding Learning Labs
The Reimagining Summer School focuses on co-designing spaces and environments for collective learning. Doctoral Candidates (DCs) will gain hands-on knowledge in designing spatial, infrastructural, and organizational forms for learning, while exploring the politics of design and developing participatory tools and methodologies for collaboration with diverse participants and stakeholders.