LCP Research Symposium

Last week we hosted our inaugural LCP Research Symposium. The motivation was very much grounded in our personal experience that academic life is busy and it is often a challenge to have the time and space to engage in deep thinking and in-depth and meaningful research dialogues with the right people. In the LCP, we felt it was therefore time to bring together leading project scholars and provide the platform for a day of thinking and conversing. We do not intend this to be (or become) a conference. We intend to offer to a group of carefully selected participants the opportunity to interact in-depth, and share ideas in a stimulating enviroment to help advance the thinking in our field. We envisaged open-minded, exploratory and generative exchange of ideas on a variety of topics relevant to shaping projects for sustainable futures – from methods and theoretical approaches to contemporary topics. And we were not disappointed!

We had a fabulous 1.5 days which were described by participants as an "excellent event" and that they liked how "collegial" it was. We started with a keynote by Prof Alice Owens, Director of the Sustainability Research Institute at Leeds, on the topic of 'Can projects be sustainable?' which was followed by an engaging discussing which continued over dinner. The next day kicked off with research conversations around papers and idea pitches and an impulse talk by Prof Miia Martinsuo, University of Turku, Finland. Through interactive discussions we explored theories and research agendas. Prof Naomi Brookes, Visiting Professor at the LCP, then led us through a workshop asking what major projects can learn from abstract art. We concluded with a reflection and pair sharing on the key take aways.

We would like to thank all the participants who made the (not always easy) journey to Leeds from near and far. It was certainly a thought provoking event of which we hope to develop a more in depth research contribution. Let's keep the dialogue going and repeat it again next year!

Participants of the first LCP Research Symposium:
Dr Mohammed Abdelmegid, University of Leeds
Dr Simon Addyman, UCL
Prof Tuomas Ahola, Tampere University, Finland
Prof Naomi Brookes, University of Leeds
Dr Catriona Burke, University of Limerick, Ireland
Dr Paul Chapman OBE, University of Oxford
Dr William Collinge, University of Leeds
Prof Nathalie Drouin, UQAM, Canada
Dr Jas Kalra, University of Manchester
Dr Richard Kirkham, University of Manchester
Prof Ole Jonny Klakegg, NTNU, Norway
Dr Dicle Kortantamer, University of Leeds
Dr Kate Lawrence, University of Leeds
Prof Miia Martinsuo, University of Turky, Finland
Prof Alice Owen, University of Leeds
Dr Luca Sabini, University of Leeds
Dr Yixue Shen, University of Leeds
Dr Christian Thuesen, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark
Prof Rodney Turner, University of Leeds
Prof Christine Unterhitzenberger, University of Leeds
Dr Lauri Vuorinen, University of Turku, Finland
Prof Graham Winch, University of Manchester