Energy
Transitions towards a renewable energy system bring new roles for users, communities and providers, creating challenges for inclusive and effective governance. Our research asks how transitions towards sustainable energy can be enabled locally and internationally: what do transitions mean for everyday citizen engagement and for the socio-material organisation of energy-water-food systems and infrastructures across scales?
We question what energy is used for and for whom: providing heat, light, comfort, mobility for householders, cooperatives, municipalities, industries or sectors of shipping, tourism and transport. With our emphasis on a user perspective, we contribute to the literature on participation and co-creation, energy justice and citizenship. Material objects of research encompass energy generation technologies like wind and solar parks, infrastructures like heat networks and smart grids and devices like heat pumps, cooking stoves and smart meters. We study these in their local contexts and emphasise the connections with parallel transitions such as those in water and food systems.
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Research themes
Circularity
We focus on how circular social practices emerge and scale up, and their socio- and environmental implications.
Biodiversity
We study how diverse global approaches to halt biodiversity loss, shape the governance of human–nature relation.
Food
We examine how local to global food systems and their governance innovations address sustainability challenges across production, consumption and value chains.
Climate
We study how fair and effective climate governance can address mitigation, adaptation, and future climate risks across scales and sectors.
Energy
Our research asks how transitions towards sustainable energy can be enabled locally and internationally.