2pm. This seminar examines how interactive public spaces such as science centres can serve simultaneously as settings for science communication, education, and empirical research. Drawing on examples from the Copernicus Science Centre, it considers the various ways in which visitors can be involved in the creation of knowledge, ranging from participation in research to citizen science. It focuses on the LivingLAB, a participatory research project embedded within the Copernicus exhibition, with particular emphasis on its practical and procedural dimension: how studies are designed and conducted on the exhibition floor through a set of exhibit-like research stations. The OЯTHO exhibit serves as an illustrative case, through which the methodological and practical challenges of embedding research within public engagement settings are discussed, with attention to collaboration, learning, interaction, and ecological validity.

3pm. In the second part of the seminar, Professor Dor Abrahamson will present findings from the OЯTHO research game. OЯTHO is a digital-tabletop two-player game designed to investigate how people learn mathematical concepts through coordinating their joint action. Drawing on data collected in public science-center settings, he will discuss emerging findings on collaborative learning, embodied cognition, and mathematical thinking, as well as future directions involving artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and educational technology design.

The seminar also marks the launch of OЯTHO in Luxembourg, where the exhibit has been brought to the Luxembourg Science Center by Catalina Lomos and LISER with the support of the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR, INTER/MOBILITY/2024/SC/18945452 & PSP-CLASSIC/2025/19919740).

Seminar

Series: Experimental and Participatory Research seminar (ExPaR)

English

LivingLAB and the Future of Learning: Digital Technologies, Research, and Innovation

When:

THU, 2 JUL 2026

From:

2:00 PM

To:

4:00 PM

Where:

Hybrid

Description

Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER)

11, Porte des Sciences | L-4366 Esch/Alzette

LISER 1st floor, Salle Conference (Jane Jacobs)

With:

Katarzyna Potęga vel Żabik

Prof. Dr. Dor Abrahamson - UC Berkeley

Partners:

Speaker

Katarzyna Potęga vel Żabik

Head of the Research Department at the Copernican Revolution Lab, the research and develop-ment branch of the Copernicus Science Centre in Warsaw

Katarzyna Potęga vel Żabik leads the Research Department at the Copernican Revolution Lab, the R&D unit of the Copernicus Science Centre. Over the past decade, her work has focused on how people learn in designed situations, from school lessons to museum visits, and on identifying which features of an environment, object, or task drive the development of competencies such as critical thinking and collaboration. She is the creator of the LivingLAB, where research is embedded directly in the exhibition and visitors take part in studies as they explore. Bridging empirical research and design practice, she translates findings into concrete guidelines for educators and exhibit developers.

Prof. Dr. Dor Abrahamson - UC Berkeley

Professor of Learning Sciences and Human Development, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education

Dor Abrahamson (PhD, Learning Sciences) is Professor of Learning Sciences and Human Development at the Graduate School of Education, University of California Berkeley, where he runs the Embodied Design Research Laboratory (https://edrl.berkeley.edu). A design-based researcher of mathematics cognition, teaching, and learning, Abrahamson develops and evaluates theoretical models of diverse students’ conceptual learning by analyzing empirical data collected in technological implementations of his innovative pedagogical design. Abrahamson and collaborators use mixed multimodal analytic methodologies to investigate the emergence of mathematical concepts from perceptual forms that facilitate sensorimotor coordination. Drawing on enactivist philosophy, dynamic systems theory, and sociocultural views, Abrahamson theorizes conceptual learning as students’ guided reconciliation of perceptually immediate and culturally mediated constructions of situated phenomena.

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