Four interlocking layers, one integrated framework

The apparatus that identifies the competences workers actually use — not those policy presumes. Plural lineages, one calibrated core: the Narrative Science programme (EC-funded via ERC AdG 694732 · LSE 2016–2021 · capstone Cambridge UP 2022 — Hajek, Berry, Morgan, Paskins, Crasnow, Meunier) for the HPS-calibrated narratology toolkit; the STS · philosophy-of-language · information-and-communication-sciences traditions, where narrative-as-data is long established; the PI's own programme — communicational being of machines, inchoative design, and the New Green Narratives (NGN) programme he built as Research Director at Green Forum, proving ground of the Sharing-Circle protocol (Kenya 2025); and CNAM's sociology of work and competence. The shared core: three epistemic functions (sense-making · representation · reasoning), three quality criteria (consistency · coherence · adequacy). Policy gets a defensible competence statement, not a survey aggregate.

One consortium, many disciplines. Economics + econometrics (CNAM economics chair · University of Warsaw), integrated assessment and energy-demand modelling (University of Oxford · ECI), history of technosciences (HT2S), philosophy of communication + STS (PI), pedagogy + political foundations (ENOP), trade-union research (advisory engagement).

Why now. Worker-machine interaction is moving to natural-language agents. Competence becomes prompt-craft, output-audit, dialogue-with-agent — narrative acts. AI's own tensions — energy footprint, corpus politics, accessibility — are objects of study inside the Meso Competence Survey and the Competence Equity Monitor, not background.

Founded by the Convention nationale in 1794 on Abbé Grégoire's proposal, CNAM is the oldest institution in the world still teaching working adults — 230+ years of continuous lifelong learning. GreenPulse anchors in CNAM's research tradition on work, competence and the firm; in the laboratoire HTI2S — Humanités · Techniques · Innovations · Sciences et Société (formerly HT2S); and in the Musée des Arts et Métiers, two centuries of collections on industrial transition. Rīgas Stradiņš University adds the Baltic academic base (contribution brief in confirmation).

Two paired field protocols.

(a) Narrative-cascade workshops (NECx). Workplace fieldwork in two rounds, both run across all seven fieldwork countries — FR · BE · LV · PL · SE · UK · ME. Round 1 (M8–M20) opens two meso sites per country. Round 2 (M26–M38) returns to the same national ecosystems and the same site dyads — not to the same rooms: a third, new site opens per country.

What the return actually measures — two different things. The curriculum response interval is not re-run to see whether the project moved a curriculum; a collection wave does not move one, and the design does not claim it. It is built in the statist family (FR · BE · SE), where public authority still holds the levers that make a curriculum move, so the interval measures an institution rather than a market's noise — then stress-tested outside it, in post-transition CEE (PL · LV), a candidate country (ME) and the sample's most deregulated market (UK). Round 2 adds new process changes, so the measure gains instances rather than a before-and-after.

Separately: does anything the project produced travel back? The measurement that carries this is the recorded restitution session closing each Round-2 site-week, where the team presents Round-1 findings back to the site and records what comes back — recognition, rejection, correction. Circles run first and uncontaminated; restitution follows. That session yields data every time, whether or not anyone has previously heard of the project.

Around it, uptake is read stratified by who is speaking, with the prior stated honestly: policy language plausibly reaches VET providers, union officers and regional agency staff who sit in the Science-Meets-Politics channel; it is not expected to reach the shop floor within the project's own window, and near-zero penetration there is itself the finding — evidence about how far down the transmission actually goes, which is what RQ5 asks. Unprompted appearance of project categories in Circle speech is logged if it occurs, but nothing rests on it. The third, new site per country — no prior contact — is the control. Round-2 country order is fixed in advance so pre- and post-feedback observations are distributed by design rather than by accident.

Why that is a test run, not an open call. The field is not opened to every willing informant on the premise that more voices alone improve evidence: communities, firms, VET providers, unions, policymakers and training centres are folded in through the protocol's own design (Science-Meets-Politics, GRBC, the archival arm), not admitted wholesale as an unstructured wishlist. Piloted in Ukunda, Kenya (May 2025) under the PI's New Green Narratives programme — see /brief.

(b) Historical-archival fieldwork (HACx). Long-time-scale reconstruction anchored in the Musée des Arts et Métiers' two-century collections.

HACx is not a TRANSFO-02 duplicate. Last year's TRANSFO-02 cohort (PACT · HIT · MOSAIC · ST4TE) reconstructs industrial transitions as their primary object — archives in the service of historical understanding. HACx uses archives in the service of competence design under TRANSFO-07: not what happened, but what archived competence-formation patterns tell us about competence-pathway design today. Four operative differences:

• Research question — TRANSFO-02 asks how transitions unfolded; HACx asks how competence acquisition was structured inside those transitions, and what that tells current VET curriculum design. • Sectoral scope — TRANSFO-02 reconstructs transitions broadly; HACx is energy-sector-specific, and runs at every site across the seven countries — each site read against the documentary series held locally. • Method pairing — TRANSFO-02 uses archives as primary evidence; HACx pairs archives with living-workplace NECx so each archival pattern is read against contemporary competence-in-use. The historical depth informs the present-day interpretation, not the other way round. • Output orientation — TRANSFO-02 outputs are historical understanding; HACx outputs are competence-pathway briefs, GreenComp cross-walks, VET curriculum updates — operational, forward-facing.

Cross-project dialogue. HACx and NECx interface with the TRANSFO-02 cohort through shared protocols, comparable competence-statement formats, and joint Multi-Stakeholders Meetings — a cumulative European evidence base on industrial-transition competence, not a parallel silo.