Project

This project explores how intergenerational relations are changing in abandoned places across Europe due to demographic change. Focusing on two case studies: 'below the ground' communities, and 'above the ground' communities, four sites will be studied: two former coal mining communities in the UK and Germany ('below the ground') and an iron ore mining town in Austria, and a Danube delta community in Romania ('above the ground'). The project will work with communities in places of abandonment, loss, and renewal in western and eastern Europe to develop intergenerational, utopian re-stories that allow those who are usually excluded from speculation about the future to have a stake in it. While abandoned places are often framed in a discourse that focuses on the past, decline and loss, they also contain potential for the development of utopian visions about the future of Europe. The project investigates how intergenerational relations have changed and are changing across these sites and identify how different generations of people living in these places imagine the future. The study involves an ethnographic and co-creative approach to create utopian narratives of the future with creative practitioners, project partners and participants, and examine how the term 'generation' can be reframed.

• Dr. Anamaria Depner

  Universität Frankfurt am Main
  Fachbereich Erziehungswissenschaften
  Institut für Sozialpädagogik und
  Erwachsenenbildung
  Interdisziplinäre Alternswissenschaft (IAW)
  Frankfurt am Main
  

• Dr. Loredana Ivan

  National University of Political Studies
  and Public Administration
  Communication Department
  Bucharest
  Romania
  

• Dr. Vera Gallistl

  Karl-Landsteiner Privatuniversität
  für Gesundheitswissenschaften
  Kompetenzzentrum Gerontologie
  Krems an der Donau
  Austria
  

• Dr. Melanie Lovatt

  University of Stirling
  Faculty of Social Sciences
  Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology
  Stirling
  United Kingdom
  

• Prof. Dr. Susan Watkins

  Leeds Beckett University
  School of Humanities and Social Sciences
  Leeds
  United Kingdom