The following abstracts and information are provided on the posters that are on display, as well as the parallel sessions.
Thermal Performance of PCM-Enhanced Wallboards under Subarctic Conditions: A Pilot Study in Umeå, Sweden
Bokai Liu, Researcher at the Department of Applied Physics and Electronics, Umeå University
Buildings play a critical role in global energy use and carbon emissions, particularly in cold climates where heating demand is high. This poster presents a pilot experimental study on the use of phase change materials (PCMs) in wallboards to improve thermal performance under subarctic conditions in Umeå, Sweden. Four wallboard types were tested, including a conventional gypsum board, a commercial PCM board, and two laboratory-developed boards with high PCM content. Results show that PCM-enhanced wallboards can significantly reduce indoor temperature fluctuations by storing and releasing heat, thereby improving thermal comfort and potentially lowering heating energy demand. However, performance differences between materials highlight the importance of design and material stability. The study demonstrates how smart material integration in building envelopes can contribute to more energy-efficient and climate-resilient buildings, supporting broader sustainability transitions by reducing reliance on active heating systems and enabling low-carbon building solutions.
Nordic Speculations: Finnish Arctic Narratives and the Imaginary of the Polycrisis
Lena Leimgruber Haraldsson, PhD Student in English Literature at the Department of Language Studies, Umeå University
As the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal horizon approaches, this poster explores how contemporary Finnish fiction can contribute to thinking about transformation and sustainability in the context of the ‘polycrisis’ of climate change, geopolitical instability and pressures on academic freedom. It argues that speculative narratives function as critical laboratories for imagining alternative ecological and social futures, particularly in relation to the Arctic, which is no longer represented as an empty periphery but as an active, relational space shaped by more-than-human agencies. Focusing on Iida Turpeinen’s Beasts of the Sea, Inkeri Markkula’s Wo das Eis Niemals Schmilzt and Leea and Klaus Klemola’s Expedition Kyla, the poster examines how these texts critique neo-colonial Arctic imaginaries, foreground environmental memory through glacial metaphors and address extinction and scientific responsibility. Together, they show how fiction can support sustainability thinking by challenging extractive logics and fostering ethical awareness of interdependence between humans, environments and non-human life.
From buzzword to practice in the era of the “polycrisis”: Ambitions, dimensions, tensions, and ways forward with local energy (systems’) resilience in the Nordics
Spilios Iliopoulos, IEI, Division of Environmental Technology and Management, Linköping University; Sara Gustafsson, IEI, Division of Environmental Technology and Management, Linköping University
In a global context characterised by overlapping crises, resilience has become a central yet contested concept in energy governance and management. Despite growing attention, limited research has examined how energy resilience is understood and operationalised at the municipal level. This study investigates how Nordic municipalities interpret and enact energy resilience in response to the polycrisis. Drawing on document analysis and semi-structured interviews with municipal officials, energy company representatives, and local politicians in Gothenburg, Malmö, and Vaasa, the study applies the persistence, adaptation, transformation framework to examine resilience. The findings show that energy resilience is a multidimensional concept shaped by environmental, technical, security, socio-economic, and organisational considerations. Municipal responses range from strategies focused on robustness and security of supply to adaptive and transformative initiatives involving experimentation and institutional change. However, financial constraints, organisational fragmentation, and sustainability trade-offs continue to shape local resilience efforts.
Reimagining Campus Spaces within Sustainable Food Systems: The Intersection of Food Sovereignty, Experiential Learning, and Local Sustainability
Jacob Bothen and Tina-Simone Neset; Linköping University, Department of Thematic Studies-Environmental Change (TEMAM)
Despite growing interest in sustainable food systems, university campuses rarely maximize their potential for food production. This abstract examines the institutional, logistical, and cultural barriers that limit agricultural expansion on campus grounds. By analysing the intersection of campus sustainability and food sovereignty, we discuss present challenges and opportunities to the dominant perception of nutrition, resilience, and education in higher education. Through case studies and spatial analysis, we aim to evaluate the narrative that current campus landscaping prioritizes aesthetic value over functional, climate-resilient food production. Furthermore, institutional risk aversion and fragmented supply chains often separate campus dining from student-led agricultural initiatives. We argue that transforming campuses into edible landscapes not only strengthens localized food security but also provides critical experiential learning opportunities that redefine environmental education. Ultimately, this discussions provides a actionable framework for students and faculty to dismantle systemic barriers, allowing universities to transition from passive consumers to active, resilient producers within their regional food sheds.
Keywords of the Digital Present
Author: The research collective SoLiXG (Social Life of XG) with members from Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Linköping University, The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest, University of Northwestern Switzerland, University of Plymouth.
Linköping University authors: Stefan Jonsson, Karin Krifors, Mauricio Rogat, Kim West
The parallel sessions will be divided into two blocks between 10:30–12:00 and 13:00–14:30. The information is preliminary and may be subject to change. Further details will be added as they become available.
Beyond Polarisation: Junior Researchers on Transformation and Sustainability
Felizitas Messinger; Hilde Weiser; Karolina Eriksson; Lena Leimgruber Haraldsson; Lieuwe Jan Hettema; Mikaela Wikström Ruona; Pia Palo; Sergio Bravo Josephson; Stefan Westin; Verah Nafula Luande, Umeå University
Chair: to be announced
This session is initiated by the UTRI Young Researcher Network, in response to the issues of polarisation we face across our different fields. We see it, for example, in media discourses and spatial politics of the green transition, in ideas of sustainability in language and technology education, in the shaping of municipal Sámi language policy, in children’s food interactions and their discourses around sustainable food, and in literary imaginaries of climate change and colonialism in the Arctic.
The session is organised as an interactive workshop directed towards junior scholars. The aim is to explore how, as emerging researchers, we, through our different research practices, work to critically engage with and imagine transformation beyond polarisation. We will explore concepts such as agonism, dialogue, and deliberation and hope to create connections that extend beyond the conference itself: to offer a space for junior researchers to engage with shared challenges, tensions and possibilities.
What is the role of higher education in driving sustainability transformation?
Johanna Lönngren, Associate professor in science and engineering education at the Department of Science and Mathematics Education, Umeå University.
Chair: Johanna Lönngren
At higher education institutions, we often talk about what others should do to contribute to sustainability transformation. Higher education itself, however, has remained relatively immune to calls for transformation that goes beyond surface-level changes (e.g., replacing one course with another or adding some "green" content).
This workshop explores critical perspectives on the role of higher education for driving sustainability transformation through research, education, and societal collaborations. It also invites participants to reflect on our own responsibilities in maintaining status quo or contributing to transforming higher education.
Narratives of transformation (workshop format)
Associate Professor Matilda Marshall, Ethnology, Umeå University; Professor Maria Lindgren Leavenworth, English Literature, Umeå University; Associate Professor Elena Lindholm, Spanish, Umeå University; Climate strategist Viktoria Vingmarker, Umeå kommun.
Chair: Matilda Marshall
How can narratives be used to communicate research on sustainability and societal transformation in a way that is relatable for the general public? In this workshop we invite participants to explore a near future and visualize how their research has contributed to a sustainable future. Through practical exercises, we will create narratives and contemplate how narrative and creative methods can be used in our academic and pedagogical practice.
All are welcome, no prior experience is required!
The Future of food in the polycrisis: Addressing dietary transitions and the role of plant-based foods in a changing world
Moderator: Prof Armando Perez-Cueto; Presenter 1, Arturo Turillazzi (PhD candidate); Presenter 2 Jean-Paul Garin (PhD candidate); Presenter 3 Maxence Blanchet (PhD candidate), Umeå University
Food systems are central to the current global “polycrisis”, contributing to climate change, public health challenges, and geopolitical instability. At the same time, they are highly complex, involving interconnected actors, environments, and practices across multiple scales, which calls for a systemic approach. Key barriers to healthier and more sustainable eating behaviours arise at the individual level (e.g., taste, perceptions) and are reinforced by structural factors such as policy environments and socio-economic conditions. Current evidence points to a dietary shift towards foods that are both environmentally sustainable and beneficial for health, particularly those of plant origin. However, despite scientific consensus, this shift faces public resistance and contestation in social discourse. This panel explores dietary transitions, especially towards plant-based diets, within the broader transformation of food systems. Within this framework, the EU-funded projects HealthFerm and LOCALITY generate scientific evidence to support sustainable and healthy food transitions in Europe. Drawing directly on findings from these projects, the discussion will address consumer-accepted policy measures, sensory and behavioural drivers of food choices, and the role of social and cultural contexts in shaping dietary change.
Degrowth in the North
Researcher Elias Isaksson, Department of Political Science, Umeå University. Speakers to be announced.
Chair: Elias Isaksson
For decades, green growth has been the dominant response to escalating environmental problems. However, as emissions continue to rise and seven of the nine planetary boundaries have been transgressed, green growth has failed to deliver on its promises. The search for alternative pathways is therefore urgent, and in this context, degrowth and other growth-critical theories provide an increasingly important perspective on the challenges of a sustainable transition.
This session explores how degrowth ideas can be applied to northern contexts through three different interpretations of “northern”: wealthy countries in the Global North; Northern European welfare states; and the sparsely populated, resource-rich region of Sápmi/northern Sweden. How applicable is degrowth to these contexts, and what are the implications for degrowth theory and strategies when they are taken into account?
Three invited speakers will briefly introduce the themes, but the primary focus of the session will be on the exchange of ideas among participants.
Workshop: From Bouncing Back to Bouncing Forward-or how crises can become opportunities for transformative change: Reimagining the resilience-sustainability relationship in the era of polycrisis
Open for participants
Chair: Spilios Iliopoulos and Sara Gustafsson
As societies confront intertangled and overlapping crises such as climate change, geopolitical tensions, energy insecurity, democratic backsliding, and growing resistance to sustainability agendas, the question is no longer how to return to normal, but whether the old normal is desirable or even viable. This interactive workshop explores how the notion and operationalization of resilience can move beyond the traditional approach of recovery and stability toward transformative change. Drawing on perspectives from resilience thinking, sustainability transitions, and transformation research, participants are encouraged to critically examine the distinction between "bouncing back" and "bouncing forward" in response to disruption. Through short provocations, facilitated discussions, and collaborative exercises, we will explore what should be preserved, adapted, and transformed in pursuit of more sustainable futures. The workshop invites researchers and practitioners to reflect on how crises like COVID-19, the energy crisis and the growing intensity and frequency of extreme weather events can serve not only as challenges to sustainability, but also as opportunities to rethink systems, institutions, and pathways for societal transformation in times of polycrisis.
Knowledge production and sense-making from local to global scales
Joel Göransson Scalzotto, Phd-student, VTI MAP (Mobility, Actors, Planning)+ KTH (Urban and Regional Studies); Harald Rohracher, Professor, Linköping University; Angelica Johansson,Post-doctoral Researcher, Linköping University, Theme: Technology and Social Change; Juliana Porsani, Assistant Professor, Linköping University, Department of Thematic Studies (Environmental Change).
Chair: Victoria Wibeck
Separate abstracts:
Joel Göransson Scalzotto
Title: The Garden City as a Guarded City? A conjunctural analysis of Knivsta's four-track Backlash
This article examines the backlash to the Four Track Agreement in Knivsta, a rapidly growing Swedish municipality where major railway and housing expansion has become the subject of sustained political contestation. Drawing on interviews with local politicians, media analysis and municipal documents, the article examines the Garden City as a political concept through which competing visions of Knivsta’s future are articulated. Rather than understanding the backlash simply as a rejection of sustainable urban development, the article asks what is being defended, and what kinds of urban futures are made thinkable through the Garden City. A conjunctural analysis traces how the concept becomes politically salient at the intersection of environmental concerns, housing pressures, anxieties about population growth and social change, and a wider Swedish fearscape surrounding crime and insecurity. The article argues that the Garden City does not carry a fixed political meaning, but becomes a vehicle through which ideas of sustainability are articulated with local identity, social order, safety and belonging. This also raises questions about whose futures such visions of sustainable urban development are imagined to protect.
Harald Rohracher
Title: Co-creating indicators for transformative change in urban climate transitions
An increasing number of Swedish cities have set up ambitious goals of becoming climate-neutral which, if taken seriously, would imply fundamental shifts in the way we live, work, consume, or are mobile. Typically, such plans are connected to aggregate targets such as CO2-emission-reductions. Also other common indicators rather focus on what is easily measurable and are of limited use for informing ongoing activities or making the complexity and ambiguity of underlying transformation processes better legible and governable. This presentation centres on a joint process with the municipalities of Stockholm and Linköping to develop qualitative process-oriented indications of transformative change which try to e.g. map the emergence of new actor networks, the convergence of narratives and visions, or the (de)institutionalisation of (un)sustainable practices. The joint effort of reflecting on such indicators turned out to be a site of social imagination and an important element of the governance of transformative change.
Angelica Johansson
Title: The making and unmaking of expertise: introducing the epistemic diamond as an analytical tool.
Experts are a common sign in democratic societies priding themselves on being evidence-based. In a post-truth society, where populism is on the rise, ’expertise’ and who counts as an expert is increasingly questioned. While researchers have dedicated efforts towards understanding how the role and use of expertise in society, less research has been dedicated towards understanding how expertise is produced in the first place. In the few studies that have been made, the attention has often been towards understanding the making of expertise, but not so much on understanding if and how expertise can me unmade. In this paper, we present an innovative theoretical frame through which expertise making and unmaking processes can be studied. This contribution becomes particularly important for understanding knowledge politics in a post-truth society.
Juliana Porsani
Title: Transformational adaptation at the science-policy interface: How concepts travel and become politically consequential
Climate adaptation has long occupied a weak position in international climate negotiations. The concept of transformational adaptation, coined to indicate the need to reconsider how adaptation is understood and enacted, made its way, in recent years, into the vocabulary of negotiating actors within the UNFCCC. We examine what happened to this ambitious concept and the possibilities it signalled as it entered the negotiations. Drawing on document analysis, interviews, survey, and observations, we show how differently situated actors made sense of it in relation to their experiences. These interpretations became politically consequential in ways that some Parties found unacceptable. The risks associated with embracing the concept outweighed what seemed to be widespread support for reinvigorated, transformational adaptation agendas. The case foregrounds questions about how/when scientific concepts gain traction, and how readily they accommodate different interpretations and possibilities for action, inviting reflection on the responsibilities of researchers producing knowledge for sustainability.
Sustainability in shifting geopolitical landscapes
Carl-Ulrik Schierup, Professor Emeritus, Linköping University/IKOS; Veronica Brodén Gyberg, Associate Professor, Linköping University; Claudia Tazreiter, Professor, Linköping University.
Chair: Stefan Jonsson
Separate abstracts:
Carl-Ulrik Schierup
Title: Human Rights and Migration Governance in a Fragmenting Global Order: A Sustainable Utopia?
Presentation of work in progress on a new Routledge edited volume examining a central paradox of contemporary migration governance: the persistence of human rights as a universal normative horizon alongside their increasingly selective, managerial and securitised institutionalisation. Approaching this transformation through critical political economy, the volume understands migration governance as central to the organisation of labour, development and political membership within a fragmenting global order. Drawing on Karl Polanyi, it situates the present conjuncture within a “third great transformation” reshaping liberal-globalist settlements. Inspired by Samuel Moyn’s The Last Utopia, A Sustainable Utopia? asks whether human rights and the UN Sustainable Development Goals can provide a transformative horizon for migration governance or are becoming incorporated into regimes of mobility control and differential incorporation. Connecting these questions with civil society and subaltern migrant agency, the volume explores possibilities for political recomposition, transversal solidarity, social justice and structural transformation.
Veronica Brodén Gyberg
Title: Governing complexity under pressure: integrated approaches in Swedish climate ODA
The integration of cross-cutting issues like environment and climate, conflict and gender has been pursued in Swedish ODA for decades based on the conviction that this can improve the sustainability of aid interventions. Amid record global aid cuts, Sweden has now abandoned its one-per-cent target, cut its aid frame and is exiting several African partnerships. Integrated approaches now operate under retrenchment. Drawing on policy analysis and interviews with Sida staff, we trace how integration ambitions are framed and operationalized in adaptation aid. We find that efforts appear patchy and partial, but engaging with the perspectives nevertheless appears productive, enabling localization and context specificity. This suggests that the value of integration may lie less in comprehensive coverage than in the situated knowledge it generates, a value that results management may not easily capture. Drawing on post-development calls to 'refuse to know too much' (Ireland and McKinnon 2013), we discuss what 'daring not to know' might mean for donors.
Claudia Tazreiter
Title: Debates on democratic society as a lens to work toward sustainability goals.
Our focuses is on how sustainable society can be advanced in the face of conflicting value systems. The value systems of post-industrial capitalism are incongruent with human-centred approaches that prioritize continuity of cultural systems. We look at the crisis of democracy that is one crisis within the polycrisis. From positioning democracy as mutable, performative and inherently contested – as a living space – our contention is that it can also be reimagined and reconstructed from below. Understanding democracy as enacted from, and through civil society, we look at examples of extractive industries that operate on Sámpi lands in Northern Sweden and resistance to them. During the recent Swedish election, tensions deepened between sections of the government and Sámi people in the Kiruna municipality over plans to expand mining at the expense or grazing lands. The Christian Democrats prioritized economic resources over Sámi rights, with the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Energy, criticizing reindeer husbandry as having limited importance while using vast areas of land.
Artistic research and collaboration between artists and researchers
Birthe Jørgensen; Erik Berggren; Marietta Radomska; Matilda Legeby
Chair: to be announced
Separate abstracts:
Birthe Jørgensen
Title: In the Shadow of a Cement Factory
In the Shadow of a Cement Factory explores how artistic and scientific practices can come together to engage with a small industrial island community undergoing major environmental and technological transitions—processes that reshape places, communities, and possible futures.
The contribution takes as its point of departure Hur låter vår närmiljö? (‘What does our local environment sound like?’), an experimental walking and listening seminar undertaken in Slite, Gotland, in April 2026 jointly led by Konstfrämjandet Gotland and Linköping University (LiU). Through this experiment, we examine how artistic, scientific, and community-based voices and methods can be brought together to bring a sense of care and complexity to debates around green industrial transitions. More broadly, we consider how collaborations between artists, researchers, and local communities can open up new approaches towards more inclusive and just transition pathways.
Erik Berggren
Title: 'The impact is always uncertain' – on art, utility and criticism.
In this presentation, I intend to reflect on some of the questions that research has always faced – how it is useful, critical and relevant, and what might happen in light of these questions when art and research meet in artistic research, or simply as two distinct forms of knowledge and expression on campus. The presentation draws on various research communication and artistic projects I have worked on.
Teaching for Sustainable Development 2.0
Lars Larsson, Dan Borglund, Umeå University
Chair: Lars Larsson
Since 2018 the Centre for Educational Development (UPL) at Umeå University has offered the course Education for Sustainable Development. It is time for a new course that invites university teachers to explore and consider sustainability in and through education beyond 2030. As stated in the conference theme presentation – the needed progress towards sustainable living is absent. What then do we do as university teachers? This is the main concern that the new course intends to address.
At this session we invite participants to learn about the tentative purpose, aims and approaches of the new course, and from there engage in creative and constructive discussion about possibilities as well as concerns. The session will be organized as a workshop where the output will provide input for the ongoing development of the course, planned to be offered in autumn 2027.
Dealing with sustainability fatigue in education: Mobilising students’ concern for the environment
Elin Biström, PhD in sociology and senior lecturer in Education Mid Sweden University; Hampus Hallingfors, PhD in human geography, focus on ESD in lower secondary school (years 7–9); Katarina Ottander, Lecturer at Örnsköldsviks Upper Secondary School, teaching Science Studies and Environmental Studies. PhD in Science Education, with a focus on sustainability issues within Science Studies; Stefan Westin, PhD-student in Technology Education, with a focus on the construction of sustainability as subject content in upper-secondary Technology education.
Chair: Stefan Westin
This session is centred around sustainability issues in educational contexts. As the theme of the conference implies, there is widespread societal backlash against ideas of sustainability and environmental issues. As teachers and researchers in different fields and different levels, we have noticed these tendencies in interactions with students. We recognize that addressing, for example, climate denial and lack of engagement with sustainability issues can be a considerable challenge in teaching.
Therefore, this session is organised as a workshop where we (organisers and attendees) will take on these questions and dilemmas together. The aim of the session is to explore how we as teachers can work to better be able to encourage learners to engage with complex sustainability-related issues. We view this as an opportunity to meet with other people with similar experiences and concerns, as a place where conversations can start, ideas can be generated, and collaborations can be initiated.
Sustainable materialism in the arts, design and architecture
Cindy Kohtala, Professor in design for sustainability, Umeå Institute of Design. Panel members: Sara Rylander, Associate professor, Department of Creative Studies (Teacher Education). Karey Helms, Associate professor of design, Umeå Institute of Design. Alejandro Haiek Coll, Associate professor, Umeå School of Architecture.
Chair: Cindy Kohtala
Globally scientific expertise is being questioned while the planetary boundaries are increasingly breached. Research on sustainability transformations points to the materiality of the change needed. Our everyday practices need to materially change to have lighter footprints; we exercise choices democratically through changing infrastructures; and designers and artists change the symbolic meanings of material things through creative experiments. We are four researchers in design, art, craft and architecture research who work in the field, in studios and in workshops. We engage directly and materially with sustainability issues hands-on through creative productions, ourselves and with others. Such hands-on engagement has been claimed to be necessary as material participation (after Marres) and sustainable materialism (after Schlosberg). Yet it has also been labelled as too niche, situated and even too romanticized. We confront these issues in this panel discussion which we run as a “fishbowl”, meaning that audience members actively evolve the dialogue.
Personal and Holistic Perspectives on Sustainability Transformations
Associate Professor Therese Asplund, Dept of Thematic Studies, Unit of Environmental Change, Linköping University; Owner Principal of Full Circle Discovery Cynthia Contie, Concordia University -- Portland, USA; Senior Lecturer Ann-Louise Sandahl, Art Education and PhD Art History and Visual Studies, Dalarna University
Chair: Therese Asplund
Separate abstracts:
Therese Asplund
Title: Contemplative Pathways to Sustainability Transformations: Exploring the Personal Sphere of Change
Research on sustainability transformations increasingly highlights the importance of the personal sphere—subjective beliefs, values, and worldviews—as a prerequisite for systemic change (O’Brien, 2018; Ives et al., 2020; Woiwode et al., 2021). Despite its transformative potential, this inner dimension remains underexplored, particularly regarding how deeply held perspectives may shift. This presentation examines contemplative practices as pathways for fostering inner sustainability transformations, asking: In what ways may such practices reshape individual, social, and environmental relations? It draws on empirical material from a 10-week course on the inner dimensions of personal sustainability, co-developed with project partners. Findings suggest that contemplative approaches can support transformations beyond cognitive and affective change, enabling embodied and experiential senses of interconnection and belonging that extend beyond the individual self. The presentation concludes by inviting dialogue on the potential of contemplative practices for advancing personal and collective sustainability transformations. The presentation is supported by the Swedish Research Council FORMAS (Grant No. 2021 -01254).
Cynthia Contie
Title: Sustainability Education as Transformative: Holistic Healing as a Guide
Holistic theorists point to a disconnect within oneself, in our relations with others, and in our relationship with Nature as the root cause of global unsustainability. Holistic reconnection is thus prescribed as the transformative cure. Transformative Sustainability Education is uniquely positioned to play a key role in such a restorative reconnection process for learners. The “reconnection-as-cure” perspective assumes inherent core health and balance, which need only be restored, not created. This parallels the assumptions and practices of holistic healing. Can longstanding holistic healing frameworks thus serve as a guide for burgeoning Transformative Sustainability Education? This paper explores this question via a literature review and an analysis of past studies. Conclusions are that holistic healing arts, particularly those of Indigenous Peoples, can indeed serve as a guide for Transformative Sustainability Education. Supporting learners through the emotional aspects of the reconnective transformation is an important topic for future study.
Ann-Louise Sandahl
Title: Visualising a Post-Anthropocentric Future
The dominant anthropocentric meta-narrative, positioning humans as rulers over living systems, has contributed to ecological exploitation and the climate crisis. Although deeply normalized, this narrative is increasingly challenged within interdisciplinary ecocritical research, which calls for less anthropocentric modes of understanding and representation. In a time of polycrisis, sustainable and inclusive ways of visualizing dense relations between humans and the more-than-human are urgently needed. This presentation explores how a post-anthropocentric, ecocentric visual language can be articulated and how visual practices may transform understandings of human–more-than-human relations. Drawing on contemporary ecocritical art, it examines strategies that replace hierarchical, human-centered narratives with non-hierarchical, horizontal, relational perspectives in which the human is decentered. Selected examples from contemporary visual culture illustrate how post-anthropocentric imaginaries circulate beyond the art field. The analysis is informed by posthumanities and green and blue humanities, emphasizing relational ontology and ecological interdependence. Post-anthropocentric visual meaning-making is framed as a practice enabling sustainability.
Technologies, change and economic incentives for transformation
Chihaia Iustin-Madalin, Phd Student, University Alexandru Ioan Cuza Iasi; Vu Hoang Long, PhD student, Umeå Marine Sciences Centre, Umeå University; Arttu Ahonen, Postdoc, Umeå University, Department of Economics; Magdalena Sjöberg, Researcher, Sociology, Örebro University.
Chair: to be announced
Separate abstracts:
Chihaia Iustin-Madalin
Title: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND SUSTAINABLE HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT: EVIDENCE FROM EUROPEAN ORGANISATIONS
The rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping organizational processes and developing new challenges for human resource management (HRM), particularly concerning workforce skills, training, work design, and adaptation to technological change. This study analyzes the relationship between AI adoption, digitalization, and workforce capabilities across EU Member States and explores their implications for sustainable HRM. The study applies a quantitative approach based on secondary data from Eurostat, combining indicators on AI adoption by enterprises, digital intensity, workforce digital skills, ICT-related employment, and organizational investment in digital competencies. Cross-country analysis is used to reveal patterns and disparities in technological adoption and workforce preparedness across the EU. The study approaches AI-driven transformation not only as a technological process but as an HRM challenge requiring ongoing skills development, workforce adaptation, and organizational change. By linking European-level evidence on digital transformation with HRM research, the study advances the emerging discussion on sustainable HRM and highlights the importance of integrating technological adoption with human capital development to support a sustainable and adaptable workforce.
Vu Hoang Long
Title: What makes mangrove blue carbon worth local support? Evidence from two Vietnamese deltas
Mangrove forests provide coastal protection, support livelihoods, and sequester carbon. They are increasingly incorporated into blue carbon initiatives that leverage climate finance in developing countries. However, conservation and restoration can create trade-offs related to resource use, livelihoods, participation, and institutional coordination. In Vietnam, these challenges vary across social-ecological contexts. Mangroves in the northern Red River Delta are mainly linked to protected coastal wetlands, whereas those in the southern Mekong Delta are integrated with aquaculture. This study examines factors shaping local support for mangrove conservation across these regions. Survey data from 209 respondents assessed perceptions of governance, management, social and ecological outcomes, environmental change, and conservation support. Results show that perceived governance quality, particularly trust, participation, goal alignment, and legitimacy, is positively associated with conservation support, while other factors differ between regions. These findings highlight the socio-political potential of locally adapted blue carbon projects beyond climate mitigation.
Arttu Ahonen
Title: Compensating the Losers
Climate policies creates losers: individuals unwilling to pay whatever costs they face. To avoid political backlash, losers could in principle be compensated, but in practice governments do not know exactly who loses and how much, while unfairly distributed compensation risks itself creating backlash. I show that, even without altruistic preferences, a budget-constrained policy maker tasked with minimizing the losers or losses created by a reform faces an incentive to compensate low-income households first, due to their higher value for money. However, counteracting mechanisms can push towards a regressive solution especially when the budget increases. Applying the framework empirically to a large-scale government-backed and registry-linked survey experiment eliciting the willingness of fossil car owners to accept higher fuel prices as a cost of pursuing an established climate target, I find that equal compensation between affected households is close to optimal even under idealistically rich information on household characteristics available for targeting.
Magdalena Sjöberg
Title: Barriers and Promoters for a Socially Sustainable Green Transformation: A Study of Two Left-Behind Places in Northern Sweden
The accelerating green transformation is reshaping local communities across northern Sweden through large-scale industrial investments associated with the transition to a low-carbon economy. While the economic and environmental dimensions of this transformation have received considerable attention, less is known about the factors that promote or hinder its social sustainability in places historically characterized by economic decline, peripheralization, and experiences of being "left behind." This paper examines two such cases: Husum in Örnsköldsvik Municipality and Boliden in Skellefteå Municipality. The aim of the study is to identify and analyse factors that facilitate or obstruct socially sustainable development within the context of the green transformation. The study draws on an activist research approach that combines the facilitation of collaborative processes with ethnographic data collection. Empirical material includes interviews, observations, policy documents, and participatory activities conducted through living labs involving local stakeholders. Preliminary findings suggest several barriers to social sustainability. These include a sense of gratitude towards industrial investors that discourages critical reflection, the construction of industrial actors as “green heroes,” and a form of “Klondike fever” in which municipalities pursue multiple investment opportunities simultaneously, resulting in ad hoc planning and short-term decision-making. Additional challenges include consultocracy and unequal power relations between stakeholders. At the same time, the findings identify several enabling factors. These include slowing down decision-making processes to create space for reflection, transparent communication, genuine co-creation, and the active adjustment of power imbalances. Trust-building is strengthened when key actors possess strong place attachment and a commitment to local development. Furthermore, place-based planning that acknowledges local histories, identities, previous injustices, and community resources appears crucial. Finally, a co-creative method built around layers of intimacy fosters trust, engagement, and long-term collaborative capacity, thereby supporting a more socially sustainable green transformation.
Spatial Planning under Pressure: presentation of a book project
Carina Keskitalo, Örjan Pettersson, Urban Lindgren, Cornelia Redeker, James Benedict Brown, Olof Stjernström, Linda Lundmark, Marco Eimermann, Umeå University
Chair: Carina Keskitalo
Spatial planning is key in determining not only how our cities are planned but also more generally the attribution of land to different uses. Planning is thereby crucial in order to respond to climate change such as increasing flood risk, but also in relation to a shifting security context whereby preparedness and self-sufficiency is becoming increasingly important. These pressures intersect with a demographic and habitation change towards few very high-populated as well as many very sparsely populated municipalities with an aging population. This session focuses on presentations that analyse the pressures on spatial planning that this situation results in. The session is based on a book project and will include up to ten short presentations.
Democratic innovations and citizen engagement
Mads Ejsing, Assistant Professor, Linköping University, Department of Thematic Studies, Environmental Change; Jens Portinson Hylander, Researcher, VTI, Swedish Road and Transport Research Institute; Ola Uhrqvist & Ola Leifler Linköping University; Karin Edberg & Fredrik Envall & Harald Rohracher
Chair: Karin Edberg
Separate abstracts:
Mads Ejsing
Title: Escaping the Deliberative Straitjacket: A Radical Theory of Climate Citizens’ Assemblies
Climate citizens’ assemblies have proliferated rapidly across Europe in recent years, while their political impacts have remained rather marginal. In this presentation, I argue that part of what limits the transformative potentials of climate assemblies is a top-down theory of change attached to it: the belief that if citizens provide clear and strong enough recommendations for governments, they will be compelled to act. Drawing on democratic thinkers such as Jacques Ranciere, Romand Coles, and Judith Butler, I offer a different reading of climate assemblies. One situated in a radical tradition of political assembly organized around disruption, community organizing, and prefiguration rather than deliberation. By comparing three different climate assemblies — Denmark’s Klimaborgerting, Norway’s Framtidspanelet, and the grassroots initiative Folkets Ting — the article argues for reorienting climate assemblies away from policy-advising instruments and toward sites of political organizing and counter-power, in a time when transformation cannot wait for institutions to be persuaded.
Jens Portinson Hylander
Title: Geographies of scale in the backlash against sustainable transport policies in Sweden
This presentation outlines a research project focusing on the geographies of scale connected to backlashes against sustainable transport policies in Sweden. Recent literature has provided rich and broad analyses of backlash against different transport and sustainability policies. However, little attention has been given to the geographic dimensions inherent in these conflicts, and how the geography of both the policy and polity shapes resistance and their responses. The project builds on the hypothesis that there exist both commonalities and differences between backlash and conflict at different geographical scales. I.e. local conflicts over e.g. a new tramway line likely mobilizes different actor groups, rationalities and actions than do national policies for e.g. emission reduction obligations. Still, these backlash form part of a larger pattern and may also share narratives, arguments and tactics. Hence, an analysis of how these interact, or not, is of relevance and importance to understanding broader patterns of backlash.
Ola Uhrqvist and Ola Leifler
Title: Megagames for societal transformations: engaging with complexity to promote constructive dialogue
Societal transformations are multidimensional, contested, and characterized by uncertainty, conflicting interests, and trade-offs. Addressing them requires approaches that support both understanding of and learning for societal transformations. We explore how large-scale analogue serious games (megagames) can contribute to participatory formats for engaging collectively with such complexity. Megagames combine role-play, negotiation, and real-time decision-making, allowing participants to encounter interdependencies across ecological, social, economic, and political domains. By making abstract dilemmas more tangible, such games foster perspective-taking, collective sense-making and co-construction of meaning. We argue that megagames can create shared spaces where researchers, students, practitioners, and other societal actors can explore the magnitudes of change needed, tensions and possible pathways for democratic and inclusive transformations. Rather than simplifying complexity, megagames enable participants to inhabit it, supporting more constructive, de-polarizing, dialogue and collaborative capacities for sustainability transitions.
Karin Edberg, Fredrik Envall, Harald Rohracher
Title: Longing for belonging
We are currently witnessing a climate backlash, manifested in the Swedish context in the shape of roll-back of climate policy and resistance to established climate agendas (Förell & Fischer 2025; Hylander et al. 2024). Simultaneously democratic experiments and innovations are rolled out as a response to such tendencies (Marquardt et al. 2025). In our research on such resistance and experiments for democratic renewal in Sweden, we trace a common longing among actors: a longing for belonging.
This longing unites diverse actors such as grassroots resistance against wind power development, politicians in rural contexts, environmental movements, and civil servants. While some express nostalgic visions of times past, characterized by a strong Swedish welfare state and collectivism, beyond such nostalgic notions diverse actors unite in their concern for the vitality of liberal democracy. A striking example from the field describes contemporary liberal democracy as a twisted theater, where actors perform a simulacrum resembling democracy, such as consultation processes and citizen dialogues rigged to confirm decisions already made – decisions aligned with the will of the few and powerful, often with socially and ecologically detrimental effects (Jörke & Studebaker 2025).
Such actors describe a restriction and circumscription of both consensus and dissensus oriented spaces of democratic engagement. Despite their heterogeneity, these actors find common ground in their longing for something different. In this presentation we unpack such longings to explore them comparatively and systematize what diverse actors express that they are actually longing for in these troubled times.
Poverty Practices and Policy in a Digitally Enabled and Energy-Dependent Era
Elin Wihlborg, Ahmed Kaharevic, Niklas Hamström and Sofia Nordmark, Linköping University
Chair: Elin Wihlborg
This session invites papers and presentations exploring energy poverty and digital exclusion in contemporary societies. We are particularly interested in vulnerable households and the dynamic interplay between public policy and everyday practices. Contributions may be conceptual, theoretical, or practice-oriented, including concrete examples of interventions, tools, and approaches that make daily life more manageable for households facing vulnerability.
Digital Infrastructures and Imaginations of Sovereignty in Europe
Karin Krifors, Mauricio Rogat, Stefan Jonsson, IKOS/ REMESO
Chair: Stefan Johansson
New technologies, and the Internet in particular, have long been associated with increasing individual freedoms, breaking down borders and paving the way for a “global village”. Such euphoria for digital media seems long gone. In the face of planetary crises and geopolitical conflicts, digital technologies have taken on new meanings and new imaginaries. States, international institutions and multinational corporations see digital communication infrastructures as tools for resilience, security and, above all, sovereignty. These developments transform our views of self and other, citizen and alien, inclusion and exclusion in ways that will determine the constitutions of states and nations as well as local or planetary communities. This session presents three contributions to an upcoming book on how digital infrastructures drive the invention of cultural imaginaries that portend profound societal transformations.
Alternative futures or fictional knowledges
Johan Blomkvist, Stefan Holmlid and Cecilia Enberg
Chair: Stefan Holmlid and Johan Blomkvist
In this session we invite participants to suggest and shar experiences from working with alternative futures in the form of fictions and imaginaries, but also alternative nows in the form of speculations and pre-figuration. We will introduce three examples from our own research practice based in design research, one of which is the Practice Studios that have been run with Folkhögskolelärare on future practices of Folkhögskolor in Östergötland.