Convenors: Matthias Bergmann (Frankfurt/Main), Stephan Böschen (Aachen), Gabriele Gramelsberger (Aachen), Wolfgang Krohn (Bielefeld)

The workshop is part of the ZiF Cooperation Group „Experimenting in Open Systems – on the Epistemology of Living Labs“. The cooperation group aims at the epistemological analysis of a type of research that has recently become widespread under various names – living labs, urban labs, transformative scenario planning, experimental innovation policy. We have chosen the term ‘living lab’ (‘Reallabore’) as the overarching term because all these activities have as a feature the ‘labisation’ of non-academic contexts of action. The projects of these laboratories have real experimental features and intend to link scientific knowledge acquisition with social problem solving. Their work is interdisciplinary and participatory. Living labs have attracted theoretical attention primarily from a science policy and methodological-organisational perspective; from a philosophy of science perspective, they have received only rudimentary attention so far. The cooperation group will focus on the question of the epistemic characteristics of such labs.