Research on emerging adulthood is growing. But knowledge alone does not create change. At EARA 2026 in Utrecht, The Inner Foundation, Center for Social Sustainability (CSS), Karolinska Institute (KI), and the Royal College of Music in Stockholm presented a new cross-sectoral model designed to bring research and practice closer together.
Emerging adulthood – broadly the years between 18 and 29 – is a formative period marked by profound transitions. At the same time, it remains a life stage where important knowledge gaps exist.
Research is growing, but another challenge remains: how quickly does that knowledge reach the people designing, funding and delivering solutions for emerging adults?
Too often, academic knowledge and frontline practice move in parallel. Researchers generate evidence, while social entrepreneurs and practitioners make decisions in real time. What if we could bring those worlds closer together?
That question brought Professor Eva Bojner Horwitz at CSS, KI and the Royal College of Music in Stockholm (KMH) and Annika Sten Pärson, co-founder and executive chair at The Inner Foundation, together.
“Research has enormous potential to contribute to society, but that potential increases when we create structures that allow knowledge to move in both directions. Researchers need to understand the questions emerging from practice, just as practitioners need access to what research can tell us.”
— Eva Bojner Horwitz, Professor, Royal College of Music in Stockholm
The Greenhouse Model
The collaboration resulted in what we call The Greenhouse Model – a cross-sectoral postdoctoral model built to create a bridge between academia and social impact.
At its centre is a researcher with two homes: KMH provides the scientific environment, while The Inner Foundation makes the position possible – funding the research and providing access to an ecosystem of organisations working with emerging adults.
The ambition is not simply to transfer academic knowledge into practice. The traffic moves in both directions. Research is translated into actionable knowledge, while questions and experiences from practitioners and emerging adults can help inform what researchers study next.
“For us, this is about closing the distance between knowing and doing. By bringing research closer to the organisations working with emerging adults every day, we can ask better questions, make better decisions and ultimately create better conditions for emerging adults.”
— Annika Sten Pärson, Co-founder and Executive Chair, The Inner Foundation
One of the first outcomes of the collaboration is a co-created scoping review mapping research on emerging adulthood between 2015 and 2025. Bringing together perspectives from academia, social entrepreneurship and emerging adults, the research examines how the field has developed – including who is being studied, how emerging adulthood is defined and where important knowledge gaps remain.
The research is currently being prepared for publication, and we look forward to sharing its findings and what they could mean for the emerging adulthood field later this autumn.
But for us, the mapping is a starting point, not an end point. By identifying where knowledge exists – and where important gaps remain – we are building a stronger foundation for the next phase: research that can deepen our understanding of emerging adulthood and generate insights that can ultimately help improve the conditions for emerging adults to thrive.
This is amongst the reasons why we brought the Greenhouse Model to EARA 2026. We wanted to share what we have learned from working across traditional boundaries, inspire others to experiment with similar approaches, and invite more researchers, practitioners, funders and institutions to engage with what comes next.
Because if we want research to contribute to social impact, we need to invest not only in discovering new knowledge, but also in the conditions that allow knowledge to move – between researchers, practitioners, funders and the people whose lives the research concerns.
The Greenhouse Model is not a finished answer. It is an infrastructure we are beginning to build – and an invitation to others to help us take it further.
The work ahead is about turning the gaps we have identified into better questions, new research and, over time, knowledge that can make a meaningful difference in the lives of emerging adults.
Perhaps the question is not simply how we produce more research on emerging adulthood – but how we create the conditions for the right research to emerge, travel and take root where it can make a difference.
