Societal transitions

This course aims to teach students about the complexities of socio-technical transitions, including the systemic nature of these long-term change processes, and their unfolding across geographical scales (local/regional, national, supra-national/global). Students will develop a conceptual understanding of transitions in a multi-scalar context, as well as apply transitions frameworks to the empirical context of their domain of interest (i.e. energy, transport, food, or life sciences). Via guest lectures, students will also learn about the transition challenges different organizations (including government, industry, consultancy, NGOs and industry associations) are facing and how they make sense of their transitioning systems environment.

The course is split into two parts: In the first part, students learn the basics theory and core concepts related socio-technical transitions. They will be taught several transition frameworks and concepts, like the Multi-Level Perspective (MLP), Strategic Niche Management (SNM), and transition pathways, and they will apply these frameworks in their own societal transitions study. Furthermore, students will learn about public policy instruments and the underlying policy rationale for intervening in societal transitions. In the second part of the course, based on the general conceptualizations, students learn how to embed transition dynamics in a specific geographical context. They will develop an understanding about the diversity of actor-specific resources, networks, and institutional conditions across space, and explore the regional aspects of a transition in relation to national and global system structures.

Throughout the course, students will apply the theoretical knowledge to their own empirical case study, and will develop transition- and region-specific policy interventions to help support their focal societal transition.

At the end of the course, students should be able to:

• Explain in their own words the rationale behind theoretical frameworks on socio-technical transitions, their spatial dynamics, and their public policy implications
• Explain transition dynamics and their unfolding across multiple geographical scales for an empirical case
• Conduct, as a group, a sociotechnical and multi-scalar transitions analysis and translate these analyses into scientific reports
• Write, as a group, a policy brief on sociotechnical transitions and their multi-scalar dynamics

Do you study at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) or Wageningen University and Research (WUR)? You can enrol via eduXchange.nl

You must meet the following requirements

• In Period 3 you must be part of one of the following target groups
• Studenten ingeschreven voor LAS major IW
• Studenten ingeschreven voor NW&I of GSS
• Studenten via platform EduXchange

• Literature reader This course will use a Course Reader that contains all compulsory reading materials, comprising a set of academic papers that cover the theoretical frameworks and their application covered in this course. The reader can be downloaded and ordered for print.