Lars Martel Antoine Coenen | Western Norway University of Applied Sciences
Geographies of Sustainability Transitions – Past, Present and Future
This talk will outline and reflect on the evolution of geography of sustainability transitions research as a transdisciplinary endeavour. It departs from the premise that a place-based perspective is critical to understand the complex, often messy and multifaceted nature of contemporary sustainability transitions and central to the development of effective and legitimate policies, strategies and actions to further such transitions.
Pioneering theorizing and associated empirical research on sustainability transitions has drawn heavily on systemic approaches through seminal frameworks such as the Multi-Level Perspective, Strategic Niche Management and Technological Innovation Systems, emphasizing (technological) innovation, industrial dynamics and processes of creative destruction. Through disciplinary crossovers, this research blends historical macro-perspectives with actor-based microeconomic and institutional foundations, embedding innovation and transition into a wider field of social, institutional and economic change. In parallel, parts of sustainability transitions research have explicitly adopted an action-research, transdisciplinary perspective through the Transition Management approach.
Human geography and spatial research have been relatively recent yet critical additions in the disciplinary mix that constitutes sustainability transitions research. Despite being a latecomer, its impact has been substantial in lending spatial sensitivity and granularity to the systemic transformations unfolding at (and across) different scales across the world in recent decades. This talk will distil insights from what could be called the spatial turn in sustainability transitions and reflect on the contribution(s) geographers and spatial scientists can make in an increasingly pluralist, action-oriented and engaged scholarship in an age of accelerated social, technological and environmental change.
Isabelle Doucet | Chalmers University of Technology
(Hi)stories that Resist: Societal Impact, Ethics, Agency
Drawing from examples in recent architectural history, I will discuss transdisciplinary architectural practices and tools in terms of their ambitions, transformative agency, critical positioning, as well as their limitations. Projects and tools including counter-projects, live projects, (eco) self builds, and interspecies architecture, provide valuable insights not just into the workings of transdisciplinary practices and their aspired societal impact. Ranging from theoretical manifestoes resisting construction to self-building experiments through trial and error, such projects tell us something about the different formats transdisciplinary practices can take, and the significance of those formats in terms of lasting impact and—intentional or unwanted—appropriations over long periods of time. Transdisciplinary perspectives also tell us something about the challenges for researchers studying such practices in terms of consultation of source material, giving voice to participants (e.g., through interviews), ethical hesitations, the positionality of the researcher, and situated writing. By bringing attention to transdisciplinary (hi)stories of architecture this talk will bring focus to the resistant capacities and challenges of transdisciplinarity.