With this provocation from social scientist Hilary Bradbury, Marleen Buizer of Wageningen University’s Rural Sociology Group drew us into the world of participatory action research for transformative placemaking on a chilly January morning, sharing her experience from The Netherlands with 40 students and researchers from the TUM community and beyond. Supported by the Research Training Group – Urban Green Infrastructure, we were lucky enough to host Marleen for two weeks in January 2025. 

During her talk, Marleen introduced the concept of action research for transformation (ART) as a collaborative approach where participants and researchers work hand-in-hand to address real-life problems in context. Such research is experimental and transformation-oriented, deeply rooted in the needs and lived experiences of the community that inhabits and co-creates the place in question. Marleen’s talk was followed by an interactive session, working in small groups to try out putting a participatory research agenda into practice, with a focus on improving the TUM’s Freising campus. In the end, each group identified surprisingly similar aspects to be improved, but proposed very different potential methods to engage the university community. 

We are grateful to Marleen for her thought-provoking seminar and inspired by her challenge to re-imagine our role as students, educators and scientists through more curious, thoughtful and sensitive place-based research collaborations!

[1] Bradbury, H., Waddell, S., O’ Brien, K., Apgar, M., Teehankee, B., & Fazey, I. (2019). A call to Action Research for Transformations: The times demand it. Action Research, 17(1), 3–10. https://doi.org/10.1177/1476750319829633