WISE Lunchtime Talk by Anna J. Wieczorek

About the session:

Sustainability transitions is by now an established field of research with its own research agenda, community, journal and a set of network-wide meetings and initiatives. Major contributions of this community are in the area of understanding and governing sustainability transitions. In her talk Anna will position her own research in that context and plea for a greater attention to the factual implementation of sustainability transitions. She will argue why it is important and how the scientific community can mobilise the growing body of knowledge to making transitions happen. Anna will specifically discuss the energy field and provide examples from her research on- and with- citizens and energy communities. She will also elaborate on what we can learn from the past for the sake of informing the organisation of the future energy system. Conceptually, the talk will touch upon: socio-technical systems, experimentation, new business models, intervention points and deep transition pathways.

Research profile:

Anna Wieczorek is a sustainability transition scholar with over 20 years international experience. She contributes to theory development on: socio-technical system innovation, governance, sustainable development and innovation. Anna studies novel ways of organising systems through new market models, new institutional arrangements and new actor configurations. In that work she unpacks upscaling, experimentation by communities, co-creation and new business models. She uses transition studies as my home discipline from where she takes trans-disciplinary ‘detours’ to other fields such as economic geography, development or business studies. Her empirical domains are (smart) energy and mobility and she sympathises with cities’ agendas. Anna studies renewable energy, offshore wind, PV, (aquatic) biomass and new, multi-system technologies such as blockchain. The geographical scope of her work has covered Europe and developing countries (Asia, India, Thailand). In recent years Anna shifted her focus to Regional Energy Transitions. Being driven by the urgent need to act on sustainability, she regularly engages with practical contexts. Anna's career objective is to do research that matters.

Background:

Anna' background is in innovation sciences with PhD from Innovation Studies Group of Utrecht University. Between 1999-2011 Anna conducted research on sustainability transitions at the Institute for Environmental Studies at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (IVM-VU). As part of her task as an executive officer of the Industrial Transformation Science Project of the International Human Dimension Program (IHDP), she facilitated translation of the novel, though very western, insights about systemic change to other socio-economic and geographical conditions. Through this research Anna became a founding and Steering Group member of the Sustainability Transitions Research Network (STRN). In 2015 she established a Global South, and in 2018, a Brazilian chapter of the STRN. In 2010-2017, on behalf of STRN, she has co-developed and implemented a series of challenge-based professional trainings for entrepreneurs in sustainability transitions for Climate KIC and InnoEnergy KIC. From 2021 Anna has been appointed the TU/e Sustainability Ambassador. Anna is a regular guest speaker, guest editor, reviewer and I publish in leading journals. From 2017 I am an Associate Editor of Urban Transformations journal.

Please register in advance for this lunch session by sending an email to: Wise-network@remove-this.tue.nl
After registration, you will receive a link via MS Teams to participate in this online meeting.
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