OpenLab.brussels

An accelerator for participatory research, creating knowledge together

The OpenLab.brussels is a joint venture of Univerisé libre de Bruxelles and Vrije Universiteit Brussel, dedicated to participatory research. It mobilises our academic community and public or private stakeholders willing to collaborate on participatory research projects in Brussels.

Missions of OpenLab.brussels

The OpenLab.brussels promotes participatory research as a fully-fledged research method within the universities. It values existing expertise dispersed throughout the institutions and stakeholders involved in this type of research.  

The OpenLab.brussels aims to promote knowledge sharing through organizing events (training, workshops, conferences, etc.), the supply of toolkits, and a documentation repository.

The OpenLab.brussels aims to develop active networks within VUB and ULB, with the stakeholders, but also with other participatory research hubs, experts, researchers, and supporting staff working reflectively on a European scale under the aegis of CIVIS and Eutopia.

The OpenLab.brussels offers a support service to foster mutual VUB-ULB (and, by extension, the members of the CIVIS-EUTOPIA networks) participatory research project proposals and their implementation. It makes available to the researchers its infrastructures based in USquare (meeting room, co-working spaces) and its expertise.

In the longer term, the ambition of OpenLab.brussels is to become an accelerator for participatory research projects with a interdisciplinary base, infrastructures, methods, and practices that are part of a participatory dynamic.