Historical and Regional Imaginaries Shaping Transitions

HIT – Historical and Regional Imaginaries Shaping Transitions – addresses how European regions can achieve green and digital industrial transitions that are fair, inclusive, and resilient. The project builds a novel temporal–spatial framework that integrates historical legacies, lived experiences, and future imaginaries into the study and governance of industrial change. Eight case regions across Europe, representing diverse welfare regimes, serve as laboratories for analysing how transitions unfold in practice, and how labour mobility, firm strategies, and rooted imaginaries shape outcomes and direct policies for inclusion and gender sensitivity. By combining interdisciplinary research and participatory co-creation, HIT develops indicators for successful transitions, tools for renewed social dialogue, and models for reflexive governance. These outputs provide policymakers, firms, and civil society with concrete means to design regionally specific and socially just transition pathways, directly supporting the EU Green Deal, Clean Industrial Deal, Union of Skills, EU Industrial Strategy, and Cohesion Policy. In doing so, HIT enhances Europe’s capacity to manage transitions that not only decarbonise and digitalise economies but also strengthen democratic legitimacy and reduce risks of inequality and polarisation.