Rapeseed – Collaboration between researchers and stakeholders. The case of workshop zones

The Colza project aims to explore these collaborations from a number of angles, and to grasp any specific features they may have in the mountains. It focuses on a CNRS initiative, the “zones ateliers“, which promotes this type of collaboration with a view to improving territorial sustainability. Some of the results of research carried out in the workshop zones feed into local debates on land management and planning, and the conservation of natural environments.

The Alps workshop zone (ZAA) will play a central role in the project: its collaborations will be compared with those of other workshop zones, to see to what extent and in what way the mountains can play a role as demonstrators of the transitions underway.

Workshops bringing together researchers and stakeholders involved in a wide range of projects will be organized, to identify the factors behind the ability of inter- and trans-disciplinary collaborations to drive change in relationships between participants, and in the territories concerned. At the end of the workshops, a foreign researcher specializing in transdisciplinarity in the environmental sciences will hold a conference open to Labex and ZAA members.

The Colza project is also led by Vincent Bretagnolle, director of ecology research at CNRS (CEBC) and head of the Plaine et Val de Sèvre workshop zone.