USI Inspiration Day

The 2025 USI Inspiration Day offers an opportunity for UAntwerp researchers whose work is connected to urban studies to explore one of two topics of interest for urban research in a wide range of disciplines:

1. A Matter of Flows: The Port and the City
2. Tower of Babel? Co-creation and Participation in Urban Research

The parallel interdisciplinary roundtable sessions enthusiastically welcome researchers of all disciplines and career stages to exchange ideas and explore each topic from multiple points of view.

Each session will begin with a selection of short pitches – participants are warmly invited to indicate their interest in giving a pitch of their research on their chosen topic.

After the roundtables, USI invites you for lunch, during which we can continue the discussions with colleagues.

Session 1. A Matter of Flows: The Port and the City

A session on how material flows through the port of Antwerp shape the city and vice versa

The port and the city of Antwerp have been intertwined for centuries, with the port shaping the city’s development, economy and environment. The port is an entry and exit point for many materials, as well as for their processing and transformation. Its infrastructure and operations also generate or alter material flows, which in some cases allow opportunities for circularity, and in others create considerable environmental impacts. The flows, their materiality and technology, ownership and governance, have socio-ecological and spatial implications for the city and urbanisation beyond the port.

This session explores different disciplinary perspectives on material flows through the port and their role in the urban metabolism. It touches on questions such as:

• What are the material flows through the port of Antwerp and how do they shape the city of Antwerp, through, for example, impacts on land use; pollution of air, soil and water; and political processes?
• How can infrastructure, logistics, and technology be improved to reduce their impacts for more sustainable development?
• How have material flows and their impacts on the city evolved historically? Who owns which material flows?
• How are the impacts of material flows through the port distributed? Who wins, who loses?
• How do regulatory frameworks and governance structures affect material flows, and how could they be improved?

Session 2. Tower of Babel? Co-creation and Participation in Urban Research

A session on challenges and opportunities of co-creative and participatory interdisciplinary research

Much urban research in multiple disciplines is participatory, involving urban residents, municipalities, and many other urban stakeholders. At the same time, funders increasingly require a participatory or co-creative approach. This opens up opportunities for researching urban challenges with stakeholders holding multiple perspectives and with different forms of knowledge. However, the process can be challenging, particularly for fields in which such approaches are relatively novel. This session explores opportunities and obstacles in co-creative and participatory urban research, including questions such as:

• Why do co-creation or take a participatory approach in urban research?
• How can urban research be co-created in a way that is mutually beneficial for researchers and stakeholders/urban actors?
• How can co-creation be designed, funded and carried out with realistic expectations?
• Who participates in co-creation processes? What are the implications for the outcomes of co-created research?
• How can issues of power disparities and inclusion/exclusion be handled?
• How should we choose a position in participatory research (e.g. in who we collaborate with, support and join) and what are the implications?
• How can timelines of research and urban policy making and practice be reconciled?
• How can instrumental co-creation be avoided?
• How do citizen science and participatory (action) research fit in?
• What are good practices in doing co-created urban research?