Arjan Kirkels

Arjan Kirkels is an Assistant Professor in the department Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). His areas of expertise include technology assessment and sustainability assessments, in particular for the energy transition and the circular economy. Arjan’s research deals with assessment and implementation of sustainable technologies and is at the intersection of industrial ecology, feasibility studies and innovation sciences. He typically follows a multi-disciplinary approach, often combining multiple methods.

Arjan has a particular interest in critical sustainability assessments. On the one hand, these build on measuring and scoring ‘hard’ criteria related to sustainability (e.g. people, planet and profit dimensions); and on the other hand they deal with subjectivity (e.g. stakeholder preferences and conflicting views or framing). On top of this, these assessments have to deal with large uncertainties, which requires a robust approach. Besides deepening scientific insight in this field, Arjan supports an action-based approach – as sustainability and innovation can only be achieved by making real changes.

Supervision
Arjan is co-promotor of 
Rishi Bhatnagar - Sustainability assessment in Sustainable Business Model Innovation
Prapti Maharjan - LCA of emerging technologies
Huiying Liu - Coupling LCA and RRI for circular batteries in Maritime Industry
And is supervisor of a postdoc on the role of SME in demoplants for hydrogen economy.

Sustainability assessments should be fact-based, value-driven and change-oriented.”