In 2022, Wallonia instituted two national parks; in the Semois Valley, this impetus has crystallized a coalition of players - Semois Valley National Park (PNVS), municipalities, naturalists, scientists, socio-economic players, citizens - determined to preserve biodiversity, promote sustainable territorial development and experiment with participatory governance. Échos-Semois proposes to endow this territory with an eco-citizen observatory capable of making visible the co-evolutions between humans and non-humans (forests, river, fauna) and accompanying concrete adjustments for sustainable cohabitation. The challenge is not "strict protection", but collective learning to "live with" mobile and sometimes controversial living creatures (beaver, wolf, lynx, raccoon, wild boar), in a deeply anthropized landscapeand marked by eco-cultural heritages. The observatory is conceived as a third-party collective: a frontier space linking scientific knowledge, field practices and sensitive attentions, in the service of adaptive governance and sustainable territorial trajectories.
Two research questions structure the project: (1) how to make visible and negotiable the dynamics of multi-species co-evolution in the valley; (2) how to design a transdisciplinary "eco-citizen" observatory as a sustainable device for co-construction, investigation and care of human/non-human relations. These questions are in line with the state of the art of adaptive governance and multispecies studies, calling for long, collaborative and situated processes that recognize the value of distributed knowledge and sensitive attentionsof the territory's inhabitants and practitioners.
At the heart of the project is an Eco-citizen Observatory led by a post-doctoral researcherand structured around two interdisciplinary theses, each co-supervised by human and natural scientists. The approach alternates between co-construction (shared protocols, indicators, intermediate objects) and disciplinary production (ecological, historical, ethnographic analyses), with regular return visits to interpret the signals of the territory together.
Main promoter :Dorothée Denayer-SPHERES (Human Sciences). General scientific coordination, socio-ecology, deliberative mechanisms and co-construction of knowledge.
Simon Lhoest - TERRA / Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech (GxABT). Applied ecology, human-fauna monitoring, field protocols and participatory science.
Nicolas Magain - InBioS (Evolutionary Biology & Biodiversity). Taxonomy, DNA sequencing, amateur-expert interfaces, monitoring devices.
François Mélard - IRSS (Sociology of science & environmental humanities). Participatory mechanisms, governance, controversy analysis and collective learning.
Main external partner (non-academic): Semois Valley National Park Foundation (PNVS) - Hélène Poncin & Nicolas Ancion. Strategic co-piloting, data access, territorial anchoring, stakeholder mobilization and articulation with existing mechanisms (citizen committee, biodiversity observatory, observer networks).
Échos-Semois anchors transdisciplinary and transformative research in the service of a territory: it provides tools for reading living signals, puts co-evolutions up for discussion and creates the conditions for shared governance capable of learning, adjusting and making territory with the living people of the Semois.
The University of Liège and RTBF are embarking on a unique three-year partnership aimed at promoting knowledge exchange between academia and public media.
Dans ce nouvel épisode du podcast « À la source », nous écoutons Sébastien Brunet, Professeur extraordinaire en science politique et administration publique au sein de la Faculté de Droit, de Science politique et de Criminologie de l'ULiège.
En janvier dernier, Sébastien Brunet est devenu président du comité scientifique du nouveau Laboratoire des transitions à l’ULiège. Objectif : soutenir la recherche et l’enseignement dans une adaptation nécessaire face aux bouleversements du monde.
Quand on pense “campus vert”, le Sart Tilman s’impose. Mais en y regardant de plus près, des petits trésors de biodiversité se cachent aussi sur les campus du centre-ville. Exploration.
In the face of climate and societal challenges, ULiège is taking a major step forward by inaugurating its Transitions Laboratory: a place for ideas, collaboration and action to imagine and build a fairer, more sustainable future.
The Board of Directors of ULiège has approved eight new flagship projects that will strengthen the integration of sustainability into all university activities and practices.
