Transformont – A platform for social innovations in the mountains

The Transformont project is in line with other previous work conducted by the Labex. Combining research and action, it is at the heart of the issues around transition of mountain territories and attempts to answer these three questions:

• How can we characterize the specificities of social innovations in the mountains?
• What role do these innovations play in the dynamics of marginalised territories?
• How can we strengthen and assess the impact of these innovations on territorial transitions in mountain regions?

The project aims to:

Collect data on social innovations in the mountains; establish a network of actors and researchers; organize workshops for the co-construction of knowledge on transformative social innovations and run a collaborative platform listing the different initiatives launched in the territories.

The collaborative platform increases the visibility of existing initiatives, facilitates the networking of actors in these innovations, promotes participatory action-research methods, and makes visible the results of research and collaborative workshops.

Research on the transformative capacities of mountain territories was initiated with three initial partners, structures supporting social innovation: Adrets, Cap Rural and Crefad. The partnerships aim to constitute a solid core of researchers and territorial stakeholders to develop collaborative working methods on the dynamics of transformation towards sustainable territories.

The project is fully in line with the theme of the mountain as a “demonstrator” of transitions. Connections with existing platforms in other mountain regions must be established, in particular at the scale of the Alpine arc.

It is within the framework of the Transformont project that Carine Pachoud ( Pacte ) is carrying out a postdoctoral fellowship which is particularly interested in the dynamics of networks in the agro-ecological transition in the Bauges.

Researchers associated with the Transformont project:

Karine Basset ( Larhra ), Cristina Del Biaggio ( Pacte ), Maud Hirzak (Lest), Pierre-Antoine Landel ( Pacte ), Véronique Peyrache-Gadaud (Edytem), Nicolas Senil ( Pacte ).