Transformative Participatory Action Research

Programme overview

Tuesday June 30th 2026

• 9.30 - 12.00: Introductory lectures by Barbara Roosen on Transforming PAR for Conakry (Guinee) and Sofia Saavedra Bruno on Transforming PAR for Nuweiba, Egypt, an academy as practice?
• 13.00 - 15.30: Round-table: How to contribute to durable transitions via PAR? How to upscale my PAR approach? What could be the role of a university in this transition? What about the Live Project approach? What about the approach of Building Beyond Borders?
  
  Moderation: Liesbeth Huybrechts & Bjorn Sletto

Wednesday July 1st 2026

• 11.00 - 12.30: Introductory lecture by Bjorn Sletto on Decolonizing Planning through Participatory Action Research.
• 14.00 - 16.00: Round-table around the recent book by Bjorn Sletto and article by Luce Beeckmans: How to decolonize your Participatory Action Research? 
  
  Moderation:  Liesbeth Huybrechts, Luce Beeckmans & Bjorn Sletto
  

About the keynote speakers

Bjørn Sletto's research focuses on environmental and social justice, informality, and insurgent and decolonial planning. He is particularly concerned with the co-production of knowledge in planning processes and the role of citizen planners in producing just and sustainable urban landscapes. His work engages with intersections of race, gender, class, and other markers of difference, drawing on ethnographic and arts-based approaches in order to foster transformative research, pedagogy, and plan-making in marginalized communities.  He has lived and worked in indigenous villages and border cities in Venezuela, investigating environmental conflicts and land rights struggles and conducting participatory mapping projects with the Pemon in the Gran Sabana and Yukpa in the Sierra de Perijá. As the director of the Institute of Latin American Studies’ (LLILAS) Research Initiative in Participatory Mapping, Bjørn works closely with partner institutions in South America to further international scholarship on territoriality and map-making. For the past 15 years, he has conducted activist research accompanied by his students in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, focusing on the role of critical pedagogy for insurgent planning in informal settlements.

Liesbeth Huybrechts is a Professor working in the fields of participatory design, design anthropology, and spatial transformation processes within the research group Arc, Civic and Policy Design at the Faculty of Architecture and Arts at Hasselt University in Belgium. Her research focuses on designing for/with participatory exchanges and capacity-building processes between humans and the material/natural environment, as well as the ‘politics’ of shaping these relationships. She explores these themes in various research projects (fundamental, funded by the European Union, or commissioned by governments, public, and private organizations), in educational projects, and in her work in coordination and policy.

Oswald Devisch is Professor in Civic Urbanism at the Faculty of Architecture and Arts, Hasselt University, Belgium. He is coordinator of the research cluster Spatial Capacity Building exploring themes such as autonomous transformation processes, collective learning, strategic participation and the gamification of participatory planning.

Barbara Roosen is an architect and participatory action researcher specializing in urban planning and socio‑spatial transition processes, drawing on approaches from design anthropology, participatory design, and critical cartography. She earned her PhD in Architecture from the University of Hasselt.

Her work is grounded in close collaborations with artists, governmental institutions, academic partners, and local communities. She currently works as Project Manager at Enabel, the Belgian International Cooperation Agency. In this role, she leads the urban planning section of the project SANITA3 – Villes propres et durables, financed by the European Union, which addresses issues of social and environmental justice in the context of rapid urbanization in the metropolitan region of Conakry, Guinea.

Sofia Saavedra Bruno has been combining cocreative research processes and design practice with societal service and entrepreneurship in Europe, Northern Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. Her research focuses on Integral planning (urbanismo social) and sustainable development, Caribbean mass tourism, governance of landed commons, transdisciplinary (performative) action research and social innovation. From ORG she currently coordinates a Flemish State of the Art funded climate action for regenerative agriculture and renewable energy in Egypt. In parallel she teaches and engages in transdisciplinary (performative) action research as a founding member of the Latin American architects collective Supersudaca (2001-) and a volunteering postdoc researcher at the Department of Architecture of KU Leuven where she coordinated the project Cities Thinking Like a Forest for the Flemish Government. She cocurated Gebermte, Kana Nos Kosta, Al Caribe and co produced  the documentary A Thin Green Line  with professional documentary maker Anders Lubbert to unveil what motivates actors to collaborate while negotiating landed commons. She holds a PhD in Planning from the KU Leuven, a post professional master in Architecture from the Berlage Institute in Amsterdam and graduated as a civil engineer architect from the University of Ghent. Her research has been awarded on several occasions and published internationally.

Luce Beeckmans is a BOFZAP-research professor at the Department of Architecture (Faculty of Engineering, KU Leuven University). Studying the materialities of trans-national migration at multiple spatial scales, her research is situated at the intersection of migration, city and architecture. More specifically she focuses on the housing and home-making of refugees and migrants, while linking it to broader debates on urban diversity and inclusion. In her interdisciplinary research she combines insights and methods from different realms, including urban/architectural theory and design; urban ethnography; human geography, as well as post-colonial studies, de-colonial theory and critical, intersectional and feminist thought. She is also interested in rethinking research methods along collaborative and visual lines and has coordinated some action research projects in collaboration with non-academic urban stakeholders.

Date and location:

• Tuesday June 30th - Wednesday July 1st 2026
• Daily from 9h30 - 16h00
• Location: Begijnhof (huisje 9 & 10), Zuivelmarkt 33, 3500 Hasselt

Registration

• You can register via this Google Form.
  
  
• For PhD students and postdocs, we would like to draw your attention to the cancellation and no-show policy of UHasselt

More information

• Research Group Civic & Policy Design