Transformative science methods – the human scale development approach revisited

Helmholtz-Zentrum für Umweltforschung - UFZ, Leipzig 2023-04-17

There is widespread agreement within sustainability science that a radical sustainability transformation is needed to address the many crises ranging from climate change and biodiversity loss to growing inequality and poverty and the notion of transformative change is gaining momentum. The IPBES Global assessment defines transformative change as a fundamental change process in which technological, economic, and social issues are thought about and made radically differently than before. In this context, the debate is increasingly focusing on the responsibility of science and its role in promoting transformative change. Purely ‘top-down’ measures, or incremental steps are proving to be insufficient. Some are calling for a new cooperation between science and society, from which solutions can emerge ‘bottom-up’, allowing the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement to be achieved. The main aim of this dissertation is to contribute to the advancement of transformative science - a new research paradigm, propagated since 2016 that is normatively oriented towards the provision and development of solutions for sustainable social change, and simultaneously pursues scientific, practical and educational objectives, with the explicit goal of transforming the science system. As such, the thesis focuses on methods of transformative science and contributes to a better understanding of how transformative science can be consistently underpinned by empirical methods. The dissertation proposes answers to the following questions: What makes a scientific method transformative or at least adequate for being employed in transformative science settings? What are appropriate criteria to measure their quality? How can empirical methods be designed or adapted for bottom-up transformative science? How can change agents be supported by transformative science? What added value is provided by a self-reflexive practice of transformative science scholars whose research is situated betwe

Transformative science; transformation research; transdisciplinary methods; quality criteria; stakeholder involvement; autoethnography; Human Scale Development approach; self-reflexive practice; roles of researchers; sustainability science; energy cooperatives; info:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesis; https://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text

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