| 1. |
- Einarsson, Rasmus, 1988, et al.
(författare)
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Healthy diets and sustainable food systems
- 2019
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Ingår i: The Lancet. - 1474-547X .- 0140-6736. ; 394:10194, s. 215-215
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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| 2. |
- McCrory, Gavin, 1990, et al.
(författare)
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Governing sustainability transitions: contrasting experimental arenas through the lens of Agenda 2030
- 2018
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In 2015, the necessity of fundamental societal change was outlined in a universal, transnational agreement with the headline of “transforming our world”. The UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals, ranging from ending poverty and establishing gender equality to halting climate change and sustainable cities and communities. Building on UN and scholarly debates, we put forward two key principles to guide the realization of Agenda 2030: transformation (to sustainability) and integration. Transformation refers to the understanding that fundamental change is necessary to achieve sustainability; Integration recognizes that such change is dependent upon different perspectives, such as sustainability dimensions and the SDGs themselves, and different actors. At the same time, laboratories in real world contexts have emerged from various discourses, and are portrayed as settings to host potentially transformative experimentation and innovation processes and integrate various perspectives and actors. Sustainability related labs contribute a significant share to all labs existing. Despite their proliferation across the local, regional and national levels, it remains unclear how different laboratory settings might relate to processes of integration and transformation. Labs have seldom been attached explicitly to Agenda 2030 in practice, and a systematic assessment of the suitability of labs to support agenda 2030 so far is lacking. Hence, the main aim of this work-in-progress paper is to situate existing lab approaches from real world contexts in relation to the ambitions of Agenda 2030. It is guided by the following main research question: What is the capacity of labs in real world contexts in contributing to agenda 2030 by processes of transformation and integration? The paper presents the progress of an ongoing study, which intends to employ a step-based systematic review approach. Firstly, we highlight and unpack the key principles to guide the realization of Agenda 2030: transformation (to sustainability) and integration, and propose an analytical framework related to these principles. Secondly, and currently ongoing, we investigate a breadth of lab approaches building on a systematic review to draw out their capacities to contribute to transformation and integration. Results of the first stage are presented, before the paper ends by outlining the ongoing data collection process, describes the sample and provides a brief outlook.
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| 3. |
- McCrory, Gavin, 1990
(författare)
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In search of seeds: Exploring and classifying sustainability-oriented labs in real-world contexts
- 2021
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In 2015, the necessity of fundamental change was outlined in the universal, transnational agreement, Agenda 2030, under the headline of “transforming our world”. Underlying transformation, integration, and universality, Agenda 2030 calls for guided ethical and moral action in addition to earnest scientific and technological change. Sustainability transitions provide an organizing frame to conceptualize change at the level of systems. It does this within an explicitly normative field of research and practice, committed to understanding and navigating transitions towards sustainability. Alongside socio-technical niches and experiments, labs in real-world contexts have emerged as appealing entities that situate and localize around complex sustainability challenges. Their diverse form and positive connotations suggest a novel form of experimentation with purposeful and transformative aspirations. Yet, labs in real-world contexts hold different normative commitments, many of which are arguably tangential to sustainability. The purpose of this thesis is to establish a normative understanding of laboratories in real-world contexts through the adoption of sustainability as an organizing concept. Methodologically, my research emerged from and was shaped by one interconnected process, a systematic yet exploratory review. In this thesis, I generate knowledge claims on a collection of labs that intersect disciplines and areas of application. I derive seven research communities linked to sustainability-oriented labs in real-world contexts, and present labs as a combination of spaces, processes and ways of organizing. I develop an empirically grounded typology of labs according to engagement with sustainability as a generic matter of concern, substantiated in place. This typology illuminates similarities and differences across six different lab types. I then point towards reflexive governance as a helpful extension for further understanding labs in the context of transitions towards sustainability. Moving forward, I plan to adopt learning as a lens for qualitative case-based inquiry, enabling a contextual understanding of lab processes in practice.
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| 4. |
- McCrory, Gavin, 1990, et al.
(författare)
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Learning to Frame Complex Sustainability Challenges in Place: Explorations Into a Transdisciplinary “Challenge Lab” Curriculum
- 2021
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Sustainability. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 2673-4524. ; 2
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Complex sustainability challenges may never be fully solved, rather requiring continuous, adaptive, and reflexive responses over time. Engagement of this nature departs from well-structured problems that entail expected solutions; here, focus shifts toward ill-structured or ill-defined issues characterized by wickedness. In the context of complex challenges, inadequate or absent framing has performative implications on action. By overlooking the value of framing, eventual responses may not only fall short; they may even displace, prolong, or exacerbate situations by further entrenching unsustainability. In educational settings, we know little about how curriculum designs support challenge framing, and how students experience and learn framing processes. In this paper we explore a transdisciplinary “Challenge Lab” (C-Lab) curriculum from a perspective of challenge framing. When considering framing in higher education, we turn to the agenda in education for, as and with sustainable development to be problem-solving, solutions-seeking or challenge-driven. We introduce framing as a boundary object for transformative praxis, where sustainability is held to be complex and contextual. This study is qualitative and case-based, designed to illuminate processes of and experiences into sustainability challenge framing in a transdisciplinary learning setting. Methodologically, we draw from student reflective diaries that span the duration of a curriculum design. We structure our results with the support of three consecutive lenses for understanding “curriculum”: intended, enacted, and experienced curriculum. First, we present and describe a C-Lab approach at the level of ambition and design. Here it is positioned as a student-centered space, process, and institutional configuration, working with framing and re-framing complex sustainability challenges in context. Second, we present a particular C-Lab curriculum design that unfolded in 2020. Third, we illustrate the lived experiences and practical realities of participating in C-Lab as students and as teachers. We reflect upon dilemmas that accompany challenge framing in C-Lab and discuss the methodological implications of this study. Finally, we point toward fruitful research avenues that may extend understandings of challenge framing in higher education.
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| 5. |
- McCrory, Gavin, 1990, et al.
(författare)
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Sustainability-oriented labs in real-world contexts: An exploratory review
- 2020
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Ingår i: Journal of Cleaner Production. - : Elsevier BV. - 0959-6526. ; 277, s. 1-18
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- There are growing claims that meaningfully engaging with complex sustainability challenges requires change of a systemic nature. In governing transitions to sustainability, laboratories in real world contexts are growing in presence and promise. Yet, they span an array of contexts, conceptualisations and cases, making it difficult to find and relate labs across disciplines. Moreover, it is unclear how these labs vary in their approaches to sustainability, the importance of which has been voiced by the sustainability transitions community. In addressing these concerns, we adopted the broad research question: How can sustainability-oriented labs in real-world contexts be understood? We systematically reviewed 53 labs from disparate fields of research that broadly share a focus on sustainability. Through a mixed-methods analysis, we present three levels of results. Firstly, we provide an overview of the diversity in distribution, thematic focus and setup of labs. Secondly, we trace 7 different research communities where sustainability-oriented labs have been conceptualized (Living, Urban Living, Real-world, Evolutionary Learning, Urban Transition, Change and Transformation labs). Thirdly, we identify three key dimensions of labs, space, process and organisation, enabling a structured understanding of lab approaches towards sustainability. We then situate our results within salient transitions research areas, namely transition geographies, governance and innovation. In concluding, we point towards fruitful avenues for future research, capable of 1) unpacking lab approaches to sustainability as a dynamic normative property, and 2) providing a basis for complementary case-based comparison.
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| 6. |
- McCrory, Gavin, 1990, et al.
(författare)
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Sustainability-oriented labs in transitions: An empirically grounded typology
- 2022
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Ingår i: Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions. - : Elsevier BV. - 2210-4224. ; 43, s. 99-117
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Sustainability is high on the political agenda, with its analytical and practical importance underscored in the field of sustainability transitions. Experiments, arenas, and laboratories are frequently highlighted as real-world objects to investigate sustainability in place. Despite existing lab studies, attempts at comparison at the empirical level remain unconvincing. Here, sustainability remains oversimplified, warranting further investigation to unpack how labs compare in their orientation towards sustainability. This article presents a rigorous and transparent empirically grounded typology, intended to discern ways to engage with sustainability. We outline and elaborate upon six distinctive types entitled: 1) Fix and control, 2) (Re-)Design and optimize, 3) Make and relate, 4) Educate and engage, 5) Empower and govern, and 6) Explore and shape. This study highlights similarities and differences between labs, and across different types. These findings are discussed with reference to ongoing conceptualizations on directionality, providing a fruitful point of departure for ongoing transitions research.
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| 7. |
- McCrory, Gavin, 1990
(författare)
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The unseen in between: Unpacking, designing, and evaluating sustainability-oriented labs in real-world contexts
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- We live in a time of compounding ecological and social change. Given its uncertain and urgent nature, contemporary forms of governance are experiencing tension between controlling the present and nurturing collective capacities to enact transformative change. Amidst a wave of interest in transitions and transformations in-the-making, labs in real-world contexts have entered the discussion. Labs have emerged as appealing, novel and highly complex entities that situate and localize engagement around complex sustainability challenges. Labs carry a systemic view of change; they comprise alternative and experimental approaches; they carry a normative assumption that research has plural roles; and they hold an explicit learning orientation that infuses knowledge with action. Given the unfolding of labs in the real world, my involvement in their design, and ongoing interests in treating both meanings and processes of sustainability, this thesis is organized around a curiosity. Its overarching aim is to investigate how sustainability-oriented labs could be unpacked, designed and evaluated in the context of sustainability transitions and transformations. Underlaboured by a critical realist philosophy of science, this thesis investigates sustainability-oriented labs by way of a qualitative-dominant, case-based research strategy. It does this across three overlapping research phases, culminating in four appended papers. In research phase one, we adopt a systematic review of sustainability-oriented labs in real-world contexts, exploring and classifying a global sample of labs according to their engagement with sustainability. In paper I, we identify and unpack 53 sustainability-oriented labs in real-world contexts. Through a mixed-methods analysis, we explore the distribution and diversity of these labs, discerning the research communities which conceptualize labs and the dimensions of their practice. In Paper III, we present an empirically grounded typology, arriving at six different types of sustainability-oriented labs: 1) Fix and control, 2) (Re-)Design and optimize, 3) Make and relate, 4) Educate and engage, 5) Empower and govern and 6) Explore and shape. In research phase two, paper II presents a qualitative case-based inquiry into Challenge Lab (C-Lab), a challenge-driven learning environment. Paper II conceptualizes challenge framing as embedded within an open-ended learning process, both on a level of practice and space. Experiences related to framing in C-Lab shed light on how students situate themselves and see their role within existing challenges, how they navigate limits to knowledge in complex systems, and how they self-assess their own sense of comfort and progress. In addition, we introduce three dilemmas that are not owned by teachers or students but emerge, as contradiction, within the learning space. In research phase three, paper IV presents a multi-case comparison of evaluation practices in various sustainability transition initiatives. We conceptualize and compare the role of evaluation as a tool that can enhance the transformative capacity of sustainability-oriented labs and its broader family of transition experiments. This thesis and its appended papers provide practical-experiential, empirical-conceptual and methodological contributions on the topic of sustainability-oriented labs in real-world contexts. In addition, it contains a layered account of an undisciplinary doctoral journey. I do this by (1) reflecting upon each research phase, (2) providing transparent accounts of positionality in relation to my research, (3) conceptualizing and reflecting upon undisciplinarity as a process of becoming, and (4) providing a mobile autoethnographic account of staying on the ground as part of a broader commitment to interrogate knowledge practices. Moving forward, I find myself motivated by three convictions: (1) transformations are needed, and labs are invitations in between dualisms, (2) invitations hold the possibility of flipping big assumptions and ethical practices, and (3) transformations presuppose fundamental change from within both research and education knowledge systems. They hinge upon the questioning of what both are, who they are for, and what they might need to become. In conclusion, they compel us to think big, start small, and act now.
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| 8. |
- Rau, Anna-Lena, et al.
(författare)
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Linking concepts of change and ecosystem services research: A systematic review
- 2018
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Ingår i: Change and Adaptation in Socio-Ecological Systems. - : Portico. - 2300-3669. ; 4, s. 33-45
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Transformation, transition and regime shift are increasingly applied concepts in the academic literature to describe changes in society and the environment. Ecosystem services represent one framework that includes the implicit aim of supporting transformation towards a more sustainable system. Nevertheless, knowledge and systematic reviews on the use of these concepts within ecosystem services research are so far lacking. Therefore, we present a systematic literature review to analyse the interlinkages between these concepts and ecosystem services. Using a search string we identified 258 papers that we analysed based on 40 review criteria. Our results show that transformation was mentioned most often (197 articles), followed by transition (183 articles) and regime shifts (43 articles). Moreover, there is no consolidation of these concepts. Only 13% of all articles gave definitions for the three concepts. These definitions strongly overlapped in their use. Moreover, most papers described changes that happened in the past (73%). We conclude that research would benefit from being directed towards the future rather than evaluating what has happened in the past. Based on our results, we present: i) clear definitions for the three concepts; and ii) a framework highlighting the interlinkages between the ecosystem services cascade and the concepts of change.
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