RUSTIK will be present at the Reallaborkonferenz 2026, taking place from 16 to 17 September 2026 at TH Köln – University of Applied Sciences, Campus Leverkusen, under the theme “Zurück in die Zukunft? Reallabore in Zeiten disruptiven Wandels” (“Back to the future? Living labs in times of disruptive change”).
Two members of the RUSTIK consortium, Daria Ernst (Federal Institute of Agricultural Economics, Rural and Mountain Research, BAB, Austria) and Svea Thietje (Institute for Rural Development Research, IfLS, Germany — RUSTIK’s coordinating institution), will both attend the conference and will present their work back-to-back in the same parallel session: “Regionen, Stadt-Land-Beziehungen, territoriale Transformation” (Regions, urban-rural relations, territorial transformation), scheduled on Wednesday, 16 September, from 14:30 to 16:00.
Daria Ernst (BAB) will present “Konzeption und Umsetzung von Living Labs in ländlichen Regionen” (Design and implementation of living labs in rural areas), co-authored with Ingrid Machold, drawing on BAB’s experience coordinating RUSTIK’s Austrian Living Lab in the Nockregion-Oberkärnten.
Svea Thietje (IfLS) will present “Living Labs im Umgang mit sozialen Herausforderungen in ländlichen Räumen” (Living labs addressing social challenges in rural areas), co-authored with Sarah Peter and Simone Sterly, building on IfLS’s cross-country work analysing social inclusion challenges across several RUSTIK Living Labs.
The two presentations offer complementary perspectives from within the same project — one on the design and setup of living labs, the other on their social impact — providing session attendees with a joined-up view of RUSTIK’s approach to rural transformation.
Both talks build directly on RUSTIK’s mission to strengthen rural resilience and innovation through participatory living-lab approaches, and their joint appearance in the same session offers a strong opportunity to showcase complementary perspectives from the project — one centred on the design and setup of living labs, the other on their social impact — to a highly engaged audience of researchers and practitioners in transdisciplinary and real-world lab research.
The Reallaborkonferenz 2026 gathers a broad community working on real-world labs (“Reallabore”) across Germany and beyond, with a programme spanning keynotes, parallel workshops, doctoral and student tracks, and thematic sessions on topics such as governance, evaluation, transfer, and territorial transformation. RUSTIK’s participation reinforces the project’s ongoing dialogue with the wider living-lab and real-world-lab research community on shared challenges around rural transformation.
