CO-SFSC at the Reallaborkonferenz 2026 in Leverkusen
The conference took place on 16–17 September at the Leverkusen Campus of TH Köln and brought together actors from research, practice and policy to discuss the design, impact and everyday reality of real-world labs.
Pia Laborgne (KIT) presented the talk “CO-SFSC: Real-world lab research for sustainable food supply chains”. It was prepared with colleagues from all five project hubs: Eva Wendeberg and Wanda Wieczorek (KIT), Natapol Thongplew and Kanang Kantamaturapoj (Mahidol University), I. Servetoğlu (Middle East Technical University), Courtney Adamson and Rebecka Milestad (KTH), and Ying-Chen Lin (National Taipei University).
Comparing interventions through a practice lens
Conventional approaches to sustainable consumption, such as information campaigns or market-based instruments, often overlook the social and material embeddedness of everyday practices. Practice theory puts these practices, collective organisation and infrastructural conditions at the centre. What has been missing is comparative research on how practice-informed interventions in real-world labs can support collaborative food supply chains across different socio-cultural and institutional contexts.
Key insights
Real-world lab projects can create spaces for collective negotiation and learning in very different contexts. Transformation emerges especially when interventions address meanings, competences and material arrangements at the same time and are embedded in local contexts.
Further information