A call for abstracts for the joint workshop of NECTAR Cluster 6 (Accessibility) and Cluster 7 (Social and Health Issues) which will be held at the Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland, 7-8 December 2026.
Abstracts that centre subjective experience, perception, and meaning-making as analytically productive objects of study in accessibility and transport-related health and social research. Submissions are particularly welcome from peri-urban, suburban, and rural contexts, from research that foregrounds care, vulnerability, and justice, and that use citizen science (participatory or co-produced) research approaches. Topics include:
- Perceived accessibility: How individuals cognitively and emotionally experience ease of access, distinct from objective measures. Abstracts might examine perception-behaviour gaps, or how spatial and social context shapes what people feel is within reach.
- Perception of vulnerable users: How cyclists, pedestrians, older adults, disabled people, children, and caregivers are perceived by planners, drivers, and fellow users, and how those perceptions shape infrastructure provision, street-level interactions, and policy priorities, including risks of paternalism or misrepresentation.
- Everyday lived realities and travel experience: Work that considers the texture of travel (e.g. waiting, uncertainty, exposure, fear, fatigue, and pleasure).
- Mobility of care: Abstracts reframing mobility through the lens of care as a social practice and ethical obligation. This includes how care destinations are poorly served by accessibility planning, how caring mobilities are disproportionately borne by women, low-income households, and those in peripheral areas, and how transport system design enables or undermines the health of those who provide and receive care.
- Accessibility for whom?: Justice-oriented investigation of whose accessibility gains are prioritised in investment decisions, how benefits are distributed across space and social groups, and whether dominant frameworks account for the access needs of care-dependent and spatially or socially peripheral populations.
- Rural and urban lived experience: Specific challenges of low-density areas, such as car dependency, service absence, long distances to care and social infrastructure, and the compounding of transport disadvantage with age, disability, and income. Abstracts might address informal and community transport, the experience of isolation, or how peripherality shapes perceptions of both accessibility and belonging.
- Accessibility models: Integrating accessibility models with perceived accessibility for vulnerable population/transport users.
If you are interested to participate in this workshop, please send an abstract of your presentation (about 500 words) including author names and affiliations and keywords, to (see details in pdf) before 7 August, 2026. The notification of abstract acceptance will be distributed 4 September, 2026.
See the full details of the workshop and call in the following pdf:
Organising committee:
Hannah Hook, Cluster 7 co-chair, Aalto University (Finland)
Shaya Vosough, Aalto University (Finland)
Dominic Stead, Aalto University (Finland)
Mansi Garg, Aalto University (Finland)
Benjamin Büttner, Cluster 6 co-chair, Technical University of Munich (Germany)