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Het slimme netwerk waarop hbo‑ en wo‑studenten hun baan of stage vinden.
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The ecological, economic, and social challenges of our times are interconnected and systemic. Addressing these global issues requires not just innovation but also profound transformative change. We need to tackle the root causes of injustice and unsustainability, including the transformation of existing power relations that perpetuate inequality, oppression, exclusion, exploitation, and extractivism.
We know that countless initiatives and movements worldwide are experimenting with social innovation to promote justice and sustainability by altering social relations and creating new ways of doing, thinking, and organizing. However, there is limited understanding of the power dynamics underlying these social innovation movements. Key questions include: Who gains or loses power, and how are power relations challenged or reinforced in social innovation?
To explore these questions, the 5-year POTRANSI project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC), will analyze four social innovation movements—decentralized energy production, the sharing economy, eco-communities, and participatory democracy—across Europe and beyond. We will investigate local initiatives in Portugal, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, as well as examine how these innovations are connected through translocal networks as ‘prefigurative social movements.’ Our goal is to understand how participants navigate the paradoxes and challenges of power dynamics in practice.
In addition to traditional fieldwork methods like interviews and participant observation, we will organize a translocal Transformative Power Arena. This innovative research method will engage entrepreneurs, activists, policy-makers, and citizens through action research and systematic methodology testing. We will experiment with alternative inquiry forms, such as Theatre of the Oppressed, to explore power dynamics in a more experiential manner.
The POTRANSI project team will consist of two PhD students, one postdoc, the project lead/principal investigator (Prof. Dr. Flor Avelino), and two assistant professors involved in PhD supervision (yet to be decided).
We are seeking two curious and proactive PhD students eager to tackle the following research questions: How, to what extent, and under which conditions can social innovations contribute to just sustainability transitions? How are power relations transformed or reproduced in transformative social innovation processes? How can we enhance the transformative power of social innovation?
The PhD students will focus on theoretical and empirical investigations of two or more social innovation movements (decentralized energy production, the sharing economy, eco-communities, and/or participatory democracy) across Europe and beyond. They will study translocal networks and conduct local case studies in Portugal, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.
In addition to their theoretical and empirical work, the PhD students will engage in transdisciplinary inquiry and action research, contributing to the development and nurturing of POTRANSI’s Transformative Power Arena as a community of practice. This role not only aims to understand power dynamics and social innovation but also to empower transformative change towards justice and sustainability.
We are seeking talented, curious, and engaged graduates in political science, innovation sciences, sociology, organization studies, geography, science & technology studies, or related fields.
This project may be a great fit for you if you:
We offer:
We work on a better future. In order to do that, we join forces with academics, students, alumni, social partners, the government and the corporate world. Together, we look for sustainable solutions to the big challenges of today and tomorrow.
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