Project description DEENESFRITPL Studying past and ongoing sustainability transformations Sustainability transformations play a vital role in addressing society's most pressing environmental problems and the impacts of global change. However, despite their significance, processes of transformative change are not well understood or extensively studied. This lack of understanding often results in difficulties in implementing and learning from past failures. Recognising the importance of sustainability transformations, the ERC-funded TRANSMOD project aims to analyse past and ongoing transformation processes and develop crucial theory that can inform future successful transformations. The project will examine the changes that occur due to variations in agency and the process of change itself. To achieve this, advanced interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary methodologies will be employed to enable detailed simulations of processes of change and investigate the emergence and stabilisation of new ideas in ongoing transformations. Show the project objective Hide the project objective Objective While the need for sustainability transformations is ubiquitous, understanding why and how they succeed or fail is limited. Explanations often focus on either agency-related or systemic factors. Understanding the complex dynamics of transformations, however, requires approaches that bridge perspectives, and recognize the interdependent personal, political, social and ecological dynamics at play. TRANSMOD addresses this gap through interdisciplinary analysis of transformative change in the context of natural resource governance and food systems across the Global South and North. It focuses on how novel ideas and practices emerge and take root in response to crises, such as resource decline or Covid-19, and in interaction with existing structures and processes, such as dominant narratives, power relations and biophysical dynamics. The project will reach its objectives through an approach that transcends a focus on systemic processes versus agency by analysing change or lack thereof as emerging from their relations. It will achieve this through two methodological advancements: i) combining simulation modelling with empirical research of past transformations, which allows analysing key material and immaterial social and social-ecological processes through in-depth case studies and testing their effect on emergent system dynamics through modelling, and ii) making sense of the complexities of change through engaging in ongoing change-making processes. Together, these activities will serve the development of complexity-aware theories of transformation.The project will open up new opportunities for sustainability science by establishing the conceptual and methodological foundations for research that goes beyond natural-social divides with the help of building applying a next generation of social-ecological models. This will enable new ways of theorising that account for the complexity of cross-scale and interconnected social-ecological dynamics of the Anthropocene. Fields of science social sciencessociologygovernancenatural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesenvironmental sciencessustainability sciencesmedical and health scienceshealth sciencesinfectious diseasesRNA virusescoronaviruses Keywords emergence social-ecological systems transformation food systems natural resource governance theory building agent-based modelling dynamical systems modelling Programme(s) HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme Topic(s) ERC-2022-ADG - ERC ADVANCED GRANTS Call for proposal ERC-2022-ADG See other projects for this call Funding Scheme HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants Host institution STOCKHOLMS UNIVERSITET Net EU contribution € 2 498 060,00 Address UNIVERSITETSVAGEN 10 10691 Stockholm Sweden See on map Region Östra Sverige Stockholm Stockholms län Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost € 2 498 060,00 Beneficiaries (1) Sort alphabetically Sort by Net EU contribution Expand all Collapse all STOCKHOLMS UNIVERSITET Sweden Net EU contribution € 2 498 060,00 Address UNIVERSITETSVAGEN 10 10691 Stockholm See on map Region Östra Sverige Stockholm Stockholms län Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost € 2 498 060,00
