We are an interdisciplinary Team of researchers with backgrounds ranging from ecology, political science, artificial intelligence, system science, computer science, philosophy, physics, mathematics, etc. Read more about our Research, Methods and Models in the different sections.
Join the TransMod team – Researcher in agent-based modelling of sustainability transformations
The TransMod team is looking for an agent-based modeller for the ERC Advanced grant project TransMod, hosted by the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University. Applications are due October 9th, 2024.
Read more about the project and researcher position to model transformative change for sustainable good systems and natural resource governance via the link below:
https://www.su.se/english/about-the-university/work-at-su/available-jobs?rmpage=job&rmjob=24300&rmlang=UK
Looking forward to your application!
Research News
TransMod – Learning from past and present sustainability transformations
In January 2024 we have started our new ERC advanced grant project TransMod – Building models of, with and for sustainability transformations.
The need for sustainability transformations is commonplace, but understanding why and how they may succeed or fail is limited. Explanations often focus on agency-related or systemic factors, such as key actors or power dynamics. But, understanding the complex dynamics of transformations requires approaches that bridge multiple perspectives and recognise interdependent personal, political, social and ecological dynamics at play.
TransMod will investigate processes that enable or prevent transformative change in historical and ongoing transformation processes in the context of natural resource governance and food. Funded by an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC), it will study sustainability transformations across five years, starting in 2024. The project team will work with partners across the Global South and North, engaging in case studies and developing scientific models from both systemic and process-relational perspectives. The focus is to explore how change or lack thereof emerges from interactions and relations. Particular emphasis will be put on the role of crises and attractors, for example how a crisis narrative can be used to reinforce the status quo or when and how new practices become stable through narratives that support them.
The aim is to further knowledge and understanding of how novel ideas, capacities, practices and system trajectories emerge and take root within existing socio-political, historical and ecological contexts. This will enable new ways to account for the complexities of change in social-ecological dynamics.
TransMod core team is led by Maja Schlüter, and includes Blanca González García-Mon, Genevieve Allen, Helene Karlsson, Jamila Haider, Kirill Orach, María Mancilla Garcia, Michele-Lee Moore, Per Olsson, Rodrigo Martínez-Peña, Sasha Quahe, Sonja Radosavljevic, and Tilman Hertz.
Contact
Maja Schlüter, Principal Investigator
maja.schlüter@su.se
Helene Karlsson, Project manager, communication and collaboration
helene.karlsson@su.se
A framework for analysing emergent social-ecological phenomena
We have recently published our social-ecological action situations (SE-AS) framework which was built and tested with the case studies we have worked on over the last several years. The framework extends Ostrom’s concept of an action situation to include social-ecological and ecological action situations in order to account for the intertwined nature of social-ecological systems. The purpose of the framework is to support the development of possible explanations of social-ecological phenomena such as regime shifts or traps that can then be tested in field work or through modelling. An explanation is expressed as a configuration of social, social-ecological and ecological action situations that are linked through their emergent outcomes. More information can be found here.
Know your ologies – Toolkit for cross-disciplinary research
Researchers of sustainability science are often faced with the need to consider a multitude of different knowledge types and forms. This can be challenging, given that many of these are generated in very different ways. This, in turn, can be traced back to radically different understandings of reality and ways to study this reality. What, in turn, does that mean for the practice of cross-disciplinary (multi- inter- trans-) cooperation/integration which is so central for sustainability research?
Please find here a toolkit that provides guidance to researchers for “mapping” their research across some of the categories of philosophy of science, either in the framework of an individual exercise or in the framework of a workshop for participants of research projects. Made by María Mancilla García and Tilman Hertz in collaboration with the SES-LINK team and PhD students at SRC.
Social-ecological systems are complex adaptive systems
View our short animation of social-ecological systems as complex adaptive systems. Made by the SES-LINK group in collaboration with Azote.
Funding
Our research is funded by European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 101097891 – TRANSMOD), the Swedish Research Council (VR) for an Interdisciplinary Research Environment (CauSES), Biodiversa/Belmont for the project LimnoScenES, VR/Formas/Sida for the projects OctoPINTS and FoREL, and the Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC).