EUR's campuses are living labs: environments where sustainability challenges become opportunities for learning, experimentation, and innovation. By using the campus as a real-world testing ground, students, researchers, staff, and partners can work together to develop and evaluate solutions that contribute to a more sustainable future.
Living labs help bridge the gap between knowledge and practice, enabling the university to turn research and ideas into tangible action and measurable impact.
Planetary Health Diet Living Lab
The Planetary Health Diet initiative is EUR's first campus-wide living lab pilot. It demonstrates how the university can use its own campus as a testing ground for sustainable innovation while generating knowledge that can inform broader societal transitions.
What makes this initiative a living lab is the collaboration between research, education, operations, students, and external partners. Researchers work alongside campus food providers, staff, and students to explore how sustainable food systems can be implemented in practice, how progress can be measured, and what conditions support lasting behavioural change.
The initiative creates opportunities for students to contribute through research projects, coursework, student organisations, and community engagement activities. At the same time, operational decisions can be informed by evidence generated on campus, creating a continuous cycle of learning, experimentation, and improvement.
By bringing together expertise from multiple faculties, campus partners, the Erasmus Sustainability Hub, and the Erasmus Food Lab, the Planetary Health Diet living lab illustrates how EUR can connect science and practice to address complex sustainability challenges. The insights generated will not only support decision-making on campus but also contribute to wider discussions on sustainable consumption, health, and food system transformation.
Expanding the Living Lab Approach
The Planetary Health Diet is the first step in EUR's living lab programme. We are exploring opportunities to apply the same approach to other sustainability themes across our campuses. Potential areas include energy use, circularity and waste reduction, biodiversity, sustainable mobility, climate adaptation, and community wellbeing. The aim is to create a portfolio of living labs that support learning, innovation, and measurable sustainability impact, while strengthening connections between research, education, operations, and societal engagement.
Monitoring Progress and Sharing Lessons
Living labs are designed not only to test new ideas, but also to generate evidence about what works. As EUR expands its living lab programme, we are developing an approach to monitor the progress, outcomes, and learning generated through these initiatives.
This will help evaluate environmental and social impacts, identify successful interventions, and share insights across the university and with external partners. By tracking both results and lessons learned, living labs can contribute to continuous improvement and support evidence-based decision-making.
Get involved
Students, researchers, staff, and partners interested in contributing to existing or future living labs are encouraged to get involved. Living labs create opportunities for research projects, student assignments, internships, operational innovation, and community partnerships.