Book of Abstracts from the Urban Europe Research Alliance (UERA) Conference 2026

Urban Europe Research Alliance, UERA, Urban transformation, Nexus thinking, Interdisciplinary Research

The 2026 conference marks another important milestone in the ongoing trajectory of the Urban Europe Research Alliance (UERA), building on the momentum of the recent conferences in Karls­ruhe (2024) and Rome (2025). Once again, the conference convenes a diverse and engaged scholarly community committed to advancing critical inquiry into urban transformations under conditions of rapid social, environmental, and technological change. This Book of Abstracts re­flects both the breadth and intellectual vitality of the contributions presented at the conference, as well as UERA’s continued role as a key long-term European platform for sustained scholarly exchange across disciplines, institutions, and national contexts.

Beyond the presentation of individual research contributions, the conference articulates a broad­er ambition that has long characterised UERA’s activities: to provide continuity, reflexive dialogue, and cumulative learning beyond the temporal boundaries of individual research projects. While European urban research is frequently structured around finite funding cycles, UERA constitutes a durable relational infrastructure within which concepts, methods, and critical debates can be developed, revisited, and rearticulated over time. In this respect, the conference functions not merely as a venue for disseminating project-based results, but as a forum for sustaining schol­arly relationships and enabling the gradual consolidation of shared research agendas on urban transformation.

This long-term orientation is particularly relevant in light of emerging efforts within European urban research to strengthen cross-project learning and knowledge consolidation, including through instruments such as the DUT Knowledge Hubs. In this evolving landscape, UERA has the potential to act as a connective reference point—linking project-based research, thematic hubs, and scholarly communities — while providing continuity beyond individual funding frameworks. By offering a stable arena for dialogue and reflection, UERA can contribute to anchoring such initia­tives within a broader, cumulative research conversation on urban transformations.

The thematic focus of the 2026 conference reflects this ambition by foregrounding nexus think­ing across energy, food, mobility, and ecological transitions. Rather than approaching these do­mains as discrete policy fields or analytical categories, the conference invites contributions that interrogate their interdependencies, tensions, and governance implications. Such an approach responds to an increasing recognition within urban studies and sustainability research that con­temporary transformations demand integrated, multi-scalar, and reflexive modes of inquiry ca­pable of engaging with complexity, uncertainty, and contestation.

The contributions assembled in this volume illustrate the diversity of empirical contexts, theoret­ical perspectives, and methodological approaches that characterise the UERA community. The abstracts testify not only to the richness of ongoing research, but also to the value of sustained scholarly exchange across disciplinary boundaries and career stages. As such, this Book of Ab­stracts should be read not simply as a snapshot of current research projects, but as part of an ongoing collective conversation— one that UERA is well positioned to continue nurturing through future conferences, collaborations, and shared research trajectories.