Résumé
Agroecology Living Labs (ALL) are a promising approach to support food system transformation toward sustainability. Amid rapid uptake in Europe, we critically review the foundational literature supporting ALL: sustainable transition and innovation theories and the literature on agricultural knowledge and innovation systems to highlight transformative potential. To conduct this review, a diverse team of both social and natural scientists engaged in a co-creation process. We found that transformative ALL: 1) align methods with agroecology principles, 2) utilize place-based transformation approaches, and 3) foster a paradigm shift to participatory knowledge production. We identify seeds of transformation or cross-cutting characteristics across dominant theories and research approaches to fill political space and support transformative ALL. The first seed emphasizes moving beyond technical innovation toward socioecological system governance. The second seed promotes developing ALL at the territory/landscape scale as a mediator for open innovation across the science-policy-society nexus. The third seed highlights the transformative potential of inclusive and participatory knowledge production within structures that scale via networks. ALL, if methodically facilitated and supported across decision-making scales, have the potential to usher in a new transformative participatory paradigm in Europe toward more agroecological sustainable food systems at the science-policy-society nexus.