2nd International Forum on Agroecosystem Living Labs (IF-ALL 2025)

CALL FOR COMMUNICATIONS

The Second International Forum on Agroecosystem Living Labs (IF-ALL) builds on the success of the first such Forum in 2023, which was held in Montreal in 2023 and brought together the international agroecosystem living labs community to take stock of the research, implementations, and practical lessons from the use of this approach across the world.

France's National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE) and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) are once again co-hosting this event in Bordeaux, France, from 15–17 October 2025 : https://ifall2025.web-events.fr/. The event will feature discussion panels and parallel sessions of scientific papers to establish state-of-the-art practices, share lessons learned from case studies and address challenges facing the international agroecosystem living labs community. The Forum will also feature networking events and field tours aiming to generate dialogue, provide a platform for sharing innovative ideas and create an inspiring space for collaboration and action.

Diverse stakeholders, including academics, governmental researchers, policy-makers and practitioners, among others, are invited to submit papers on the following six themes:

1. Fostering transitions toward sustainable agri-food systems through living labs: for food production, transformation, and consumption. What roles (contributions/limitations) may be conferred  to living labs ?
2. Empowering participation by strengthening participatory governance in living labs and encouraging inclusion of all relevant partners and identifying best practices to work on shared goals with a prospective vision.
3. Monitoring and Evaluating success through multi-criteria assessment. Which quantitative and qualitative indicators can measure success and critical factors of living labs, including processes, innovation outcomes, and impacts beyond the living labs?
4. Promoting innovation by collaboratively developing solutions to establish sustainable agroecosystems.
5. Integrating policy by aligning co-creation activities and outcomes with public policy objectives, involving users and citizens, and with suitable governance processes and capacity-building. How might public policies be co-designed or fine-tuned within (or with the help of) LLs?
6. Enabling research that is participatory, rigorous, inter and transdisciplinary and well suited to addressing complex systems and supporting dynamic innovation processes in real-world settings.

We are accepting two types of presentations at the conference: 1) oral presentations that will discuss the scientific and conceptual contributions of Agroecosystem Living Labs; and 2) poster presentations that will present projects and practical experiences with Agroecosystem Living Labs.

Please submit an abstract, with a maximum of 500 words, that includes the following information:

• Title, Authors, Affiliations
• Theme(s) addressed
• Type of presentation: Oral Presentation or Poster
• Introduction
• Methods
• Results
• Significance of the work for policy and practice

A selection of papers will be considered for publication as a Special Issue of the Journal of Rural Studies in 2026. If you are interested in having your paper considered, please submit a 8,000 word paper by the deadline announced below. Please use the style guide for JRS to prepare your paper.

More information on the special issue will be available in 2025.

Submission Timelines

• Now : Announcement Call for abstracts
• 15 January 2024 : Open submission of abstracts on the platform
• 15 March 2025 : Abstracts due
• 15 April 2025: Acceptance Notification
• 15 September 2025: Daft versıons of papers due for consideration in the Special Issue Proposal
• 10 October 2025: Presentation slide due
• Please note: All abstracts, presentations, papers, and discussions will be in ENGLISH.

In the meantime, find out more about the key elements of the IF-ALL 2023 event, including the report available online: https://adaptationfutures.com/side-event/if-all2023/

The official event website, where you can submit abstracts and papers, will soon be available.