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, as well as their unfolding across geographical scales (local/regional, national, supra-national/global). Students will develop a conceptual understanding of transitions in a multi-actor and 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). Through guest lectures, students will also get an idea of the transition challenges different organizations (including government, industry, consultancy, NGOs and industry associations) face and how they make sense of their transitioning systems environment.

Students will first learn the basic theory and core concepts related to socio-technical transitions. They will be taught different generic transition frameworks and concepts. They will apply their understanding to their own societal transition study, structred by the Multi-Level Perspective (MLP). Students will then learn how to contextualise the observed transition dynamics and embed them in a specific socio-institutional context. They will develop an understanding of the diversity of actor-specific resources, networks and institutional conditions, and explore the place-specific aspects of a transition in relation to national or global system structures. Furthermore, students will explore the normative and social considerations and concerns that accompany systemic change processes, with particular attention to the ideas of a sustainable and just transition. Finally, they will learn about different governance pathways, policy rationales, and instruments for shaping and steering societal transitions.

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

At the end of the course, students should be able to meet the following learning objectives:

1. Explain in their own words the rationale behind theoretical frameworks on socio-technical transitions, their spatial dynamics, and their public policy implications
2. Explain transition dynamics and their unfolding across multiple geographical scales for an empirical case
3. Conduct, as a group, a sociotechnical and multi-scalar transitions analysis and translate these analyses into reports and presentations
4. Write, as a group, a policy brief on sociotechnical transitions and their multi-scalar dynamics
5. Critical reflection on transition approaches and the use of AI

Ben je student aan de Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) of Wageningen University & Research (WUR)? Schrijf je dan in voor deze cursus via eduXchange.nl

Knowledge of (the course) Innovation Systems helps in understanding the systems perspective with which we study Societal Transitions, but is not necessary.

• 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.