Call for papers

The pursuit of sustainability in the face of increasingly complex environmental problems necessitates a fundamental shift in the way we generate and apply knowledge. Traditional scientific approaches to knowledge production and use have proven insufficient in tackling problems including environmental, social, and economic dimensions. In response, co-production of knowledge in collaboration with stakeholders is gaining popularity in environmental research.

Co-production of knowledge is considered to benefit environmental management in many ways. It can facilitate researchers to address societally relevant issues and provide more holistic understanding of complex problems. It may support social learning, trust-building, and democracy. It can increase stakeholders’ sense of ownership of the research results. Further, using co-produced knowledge in policy making can enhance the legitimacy of decisions and allow efficient implementation.

However, co-production of knowledge is not always a success. It has limitations and challenges and can involve serious risks. Difficulties can emerge in different phases of the collaborative process and for different reasons. Imbalanced power relations, conflicted relationships, poorly working elicitation or integration methods, lack of resources, different interpretations of data or results, or other issues can dilute the collaborative process or lead to biased results and undesired outcomes. Better understanding of the challenges would facilitate researchers to proactively prepare for and successfully navigate through co-production processes that offer a promising pathway to addressing pressing environmental problems.

This workshop calls for empirical and theoretical papers focusing on the difficulties of the co-production of knowledge including suggestions for overcoming the difficulties. Also methodologically oriented papers are welcome. Please send your paper abstract to the following addresses (eerika.albrecht@syke.fi; cc: ness2024@abo.fi).

Paper abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and be submitted no later than 10 December 2023. Paper abstracts typically contain: A preliminary title, aim/research question, framework, a note on data and a (tentative) conclusion. You will get notified on acceptance/decline by 15 January 2024. Full papers are expected to be delivered no later than 20 May 2024.

Knowledge provides power and informing policy decision making in a democratic society means to have the power to influence the political agenda and priority setting. The knowledge used in decision making may impact the decisions’ acceptance, accountability, legitimacy, and ultimately their effectiveness in achieving sustainable transformations.

Natural resource governance makes use of different types of knowledge that can be divided for example into expert (scientific, technical) bureaucratic (administrative) and experiential (lay, practical, local) knowledge. While they all are seen as legitimate and are increasingly included in planning processes through a variety of knowledge co-production processes, their actual role in and impact on decision making remains varied. Expert knowledge, typically based on quantitative computational methods or other forms of exclusive ‘technical knowledge’, tends to dominate over other types of knowledge. In that way the power to influence decisions may vary significantly between representatives of different types of knowledge, even in collaborative and deliberative processes that aim for equal inclusion.

At the same time, expert knowledge is being increasingly contested and challenged. Scientific evidence of human-induced climate change, biodiversity loss and water pollution is being politicised, questioned, and used for pushing forward different political agendas. To assess policy decisions and their ability to lead to sustainable transformation, we need to have a better understanding of the knowledge that forms the base for day-to-day natural resource management practices, as well as overarching political decisions and prioritisations that guide natural resource governance.

We are looking to gather scholarship from various disciplines that focuses on the changing role of knowledge in natural resource governance and related decision making. In particular, we are interested in the ways expert knowledge is being used in such processes, how other forms of knowledge complement and challenge the expert knowledge, and how the different types of knowledge link to differing interests. In the era of increasingly collaborative processes, we are also asking the question who counts as “an expert” and, thus, what kind of “expert knowledge” we ultimately use.

This workshop calls for both theoretical and empirical papers that focus on the tensions between knowledge use in different phases of management and governance – from planning, through decision-making, to evaluation. We welcome papers using all kinds of methodological approaches, including qualitative, quantitative and/or mixed methods. Please send your paper abstract to the following addresses (irina.mancheva@slu.se; cc: ness2024@abo.fi).

Paper abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and be submitted no later than 30 November 2023. Paper abstracts typically contain: A preliminary title, aim/research question, framework, a note on data and a (tentative) conclusion. You will get notified on acceptance/decline by 15 January 2024. Full papers are expected to be delivered no later than 20 May 2024.

Coastal communities need to navigate among multiple environmental, societal and economic drivers that determine preconditions of sustainability and Blue Justice. Achieving Blue Justice implies that people who live and work in coastal communities have a strong voice in decision-making on regional environmental and economic activities, and that they enjoy a fair share of the benefits from the use of coastal space and resources (Chuenpadgee 2020, Bennett et al. 2023).

Social science has means for researching how the multiple conditions for Blue Justice are achieved or not and consequences of these decisions. Co-construction of knowledge is one approach to generate actionable knowledge that, on the one hand, empowers people to take action and, on the other hand, generates contextualized knowledge for the decision-making. A challenge that we face with empirical research on and co-creation of knowledge with coastal communities is that many of the environmental, societal and economic drivers that determine preconditions for Blue Justice are beyond the immediate agency of coastal communities. As examples: the push for rapid deployment of renewable energy is driven by high level industries and policy makers at national and international levels; the policies that steer, set restrictions and provide incentives for coastal and marine livelihoods are designed at national and international levels; and value-chain dynamics creating challenges between large- and small-scale fisheries.

Social science scholars have set directions for how to make case studies politically relevant, which guides the session to show how empirical, local-level knowledge and studies can help policy-makers and just implementation of policies. The session aims to further conceptual and practical developments on how to make locally co-created knowledge usable and actionable within multi-layered coastal and marine governance, and how to address understanding of limitations of co-creation of knowledge for sustainable coastal and marine governance.

This workshop calls for papers:

Please send your paper abstract to the following addresses (riku.varjopuro@syke.fi; kristina.svels@luke.fi; milena.schreiber@gu.se; cc: ness2024@abo.fi).

Paper abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and be submitted no later than 30 November 2023. Paper abstracts typically contain: A preliminary title, aim/research question, framework, a note on data and a (tentative) conclusion. You will get notified on acceptance/decline by 15 January 2024. Full papers are expected to be delivered no later than 20 May 2024.

We wish to invite scholars investigating the articulation of more-than-human interests in the public debate, political process, and policy-making. Who speaks for animals, plants, forests, waters, and places, and how are the interests of non-human entities being articulated? What techniques are being used to substantiate the articulation of non-human interests? What evidence is being used to document non-human suffering or flourishing? Where does this evidence come from? Is it produced by scientists and professionals, or by activists, by organisations or by local communities? What forms, styles, and genres of articulations, documentation, and accounting are being used by the various parties involved – from measures to models, photographs, narrative, public performances or demonstrations?

We hope for contributions that explore the range of articulations involved and how these articulations combine and contest one another in the political process: How do scientific and lay articulations interact and how do they complement one another? Is there a co-production of knowledge for sustainability which involves multiple parties? If so, how does cooperation take place, and how do varieties of articulations get coordinated? How do tensions play out between local and global articulations of non-human interests, between local ecologies and global dynamics of change, between the fate of different species and their human allies, say, in farming communities, regional or national territories, their impact on smaller or larger ecosystems, and which tensions exist between technoscientific facts and matters of care and affection?

Examples of potential focal points include, but are not limited to:

This workshop calls for papers on these or any other aspects of articulating non-human and more-than-human voices, interests, concerns, lives and livelihoods. Please send your paper abstract to the following addresses (eija.vinnari@tuni.fi and hendrik.vollmer@wbs.ac.uk; cc: ness2024@abo.fi).

Paper abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and be submitted no later than 30 November 2023. Paper abstracts typically contain: A preliminary title, aim/research question, framework, a note on data and a (tentative) conclusion. You will get notified on acceptance/decline by 15 January 2024. Full papers are expected to be delivered no later than 20 May 2024.

Most academic research happens within the capitalized world, and therefore follows its logic (Stengers 2018). In this context, knowledge is human-centered, and used to enhance the goals of humankind. Starting from an understanding that knowing is situated in and reproduced through sociomaterial practices (c.f. ‘knowledge’ as something residing in the minds of humans, in social structures, or as something that can be possessed, see e.g. Gherardi 2012, Kallio & LaFleur 2023, Knorr Cetina et al. 2001) this methodological workshop sets out to explore alternative ways of studying and representing more-than-human ways of knowing.

While Western-based posthumanist approaches have equipped researchers with conceptual tools and opened up a space to critically reflect on the role of more-than-human agencies in processes of knowledge production (e.g. STS, posthumanistic philosophies, practice-based and ecofeminist approaches, ecophilosophy) there is little discussion on alternative methodology of (re-)producing and (re-)presenting the interactions of ‘humans’ and ‘nature’ — entwined relationalities that we term as ‘humanatures’.

In this workshop we call for reflection on alternative methodologies and means to study and represent ‘humanatures’ and that which becomes considered as ‘knowledge’ within humanature entanglements. We are particularly interested in alternative approaches to knowledge, such as relational onto-epistemologies and indigenous knowledge practices that challenge the dominant ways in which academic ways of knowing are produced (Ingold 2000, Kimmerer 2013, Salmon 2012, Virtanen et al. 2021). We wish to encourage alternative conceptualizations and representations of knowing, including, but not limited to knowing as multispecies accomplishment, as a form of relating, or as something that is ‘alive’ and continuously unfolding through movement. Our aim is to start a methodological network of humanature experiments.

We explore questions such as:

This workshop calls for presentations that can be art-based compositions, posters, films, soundscapes, writings, oral stories, or drawings — or some other creative format of (re-)presentation. The workshop will be held in two slots, one indoors and one outdoors. We wish to receive abstracts describing the presentation. Please send your presentation abstract to the following addresses (galina.kallio@helsinki.fi, eerika.koskinen-koivisto@jyu.fi; cc: ness2024@abo.fi).

Presentation abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and be submitted no later than 30 November 2023. You will get notified on acceptance/decline by 15 January 2024. From those who are accepted to the workshop, we are not expecting full papers, but wish that the presenters inform by 20 May 2024 how they will use their timeslot of 40 minutes between presenting and discussing. If accepted to the workshop, you will also be asked to indicate whether you wish to present indoors/outdoors.

The ocean has become the last frontier for achieving ambitious societal goals, making maritime infrastructure increasingly important. Critical maritime infrastructure is part of interconnected networks and maintains essential services such as communication, energy supply, and global trade facilitation. Submarine cables are a crucial part of this infrastructure as they are used for energy transmission, data storage, telecommunications, and financial transactions. Subsea pipelines are also vital for transporting natural gas across several states. As the world strives to mitigate climate change, the ocean plays a key role in energy transition, with large-scale offshore infrastructure being planned and deployed globally to supply renewable energy, not least in the form of large off-shore wind parks. The developments also have key implications for tomorrow’s maritime transport, ports and energy hubs.

As the deployment of critical infrastructure intensifies at sea, important questions arise concerning the risks to the marine environment, emerging conflicts due to space competition, and the vulnerability of the critical infrastructure. Such vulnerability may be the result of accidental or deliberate damage and operational disruptions. The recent attack on the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines highlights the importance of prioritizing the physical and cybersecurity of critical infrastructure. Furthermore, this infrastructure is subject to complex governance frameworks as their deployment at sea has transboundary effects and the ownership is mostly private. This means that multiple stakeholders are involved in their operation and that societies at large are affected by potential service disruptions. Co-producing knowledge between these diverse stakeholders is fundamental for driving resilient governance structures and fostering sustainability.

This workshop calls for social science (including legal) papers that explore critical maritime infrastructure through original research papers, case studies, comparative studies, theoretical and methodological contributions. We encourage submissions on various topics related to this theme, including but not limited to:

Please send your paper abstract to the following addresses: henrik.ringbom@abo.fi, gabriela.arguello@law.gu.se, cc: ness2024@abo.fi.

Paper abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and be submitted no later than 30 November 2023. Paper abstracts typically contain: A preliminary title, aim/research question, framework, a note on data and a (tentative) conclusion. You will get notified of acceptance/decline by 15 January 2024. Full papers are expected to be delivered no later than 20 May 2024.

Justice in transitions is gaining increasing scholarly and political interest that has arisen from the need to consider social and environmental justice as intertwined components in sustainability transitions. First introduced by labor unions out of concern on impacts of environmental policies on jobs and employment in the 1970s, just transition is now at the center of debate on climate and sustainability policies at various levels. The meaning of just transitions has, consequently, become subject to political contestation. Meanwhile, academic perspectives to justice have proliferated and broadened the understanding of just transition to wider scope of issues, such as recognition of vulnerability and procedural justice.

To further governance of just transitions, critical and reflexive research on the political contestation and practical interpretations of justice in transitions is much needed. We need a better understanding of different ways to include justice related perspectives in governance processes and the kinds of just transition they manage to promote. We also need to understand better the role of opposition and resistance as possible reactions to transition governance that are seen as unjust. In this workshop we aim to foster a more thorough comparative understanding on how justice in transitions is being translated and pursued across the Nordic and other countries, in different regions and across the sectors. How do different contextual settings and procedures affect the translation of justice in transition? How can active and emancipatory governance of just transition be supported? Which analytical frameworks are helpful in making sense of contestations around just transition? And which practical tools and procedures can facilitate the integration of justice in the governance of sustainability transitions? We welcome both empirical and theoretical elaborations to the workshop. In the workshop, we devote time to discuss comparative learnings across the different cases, sectors and countries.

Please send your paper abstract to the following address (suvi.huttunen@syke.fi; cc: ness2024@abo.fi).

Paper abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and be submitted no later than 30 November 2023. Paper abstracts typically contain: A preliminary title, aim/research question, framework, a note on data and a (tentative) conclusion. You will get notified on acceptance/decline by 15 January 2024. Full papers are expected to be delivered no later than 20 May 2024.

Much hope is placed on deliberative democratic innovations, such as deliberative mini-publics (DMPs) and climate assemblies, to reform and improve democratic environmental governance. Although they remain at the margins, experiments with such deliberative fora have proliferated over the past decade providing an empirical basis that can start to assess whether they can live up to this promise. Research shows that deliberative mini-publics can successfully foster deep, inclusive deliberation, reduce polarisation, and generate novel and sometimes radical proposals for environmental policies. Thus the internal dynamics of deliberative minipublics seem to offer hope for a new form of democratic deliberation over environmental dilemmas.

However, few examples show DMPs having direct policy influence, and the evidence of ‘spillover effects’ impacting the external political and public sphere remains equivocal – the risk being that ‘what happens in a DMP stays in the DMP’. This workshop asks if deliberative minipublics can live up to their promised contribution to environmental governance, what challenges exist and how these can be mitigated?

We call for papers that explore the external impacts of environmentally themed deliberative democratic innovations. Impacts could be on policies, public debate or political discourse; or on the understandings, attitudes and actions of public officials, civil society, scientists or DMP participants themselves.

Relevant questions include how deliberative innovations cope with politics, polarised contexts, and established regimes of power? How and why does their design influence their impact, including how they draw on evidence and experts, how they are governed and coupled to formal decision-making processes?
We welcome empirical papers, as well as theoretical or methodological papers that explore and advance a research agenda for better understanding the potential impacts of DMPs on environmental governance and environmental attitudes. We also encourage early-career scholars to apply.

Please send your paper abstract to the following addresses: lauri.rapeli@abo.fi; tim.daw@su.se and ness2024@abo.fi as a .doc or .pdf file. Please name your file as [author name]-[keyword]

Eg. “Marquardt–Democratic innovations potential.doc”

Paper abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and be submitted no later than 30 November 2023. Paper abstracts typically contain: A preliminary title, aim/s and/or research question/s, framework, (a note on data if applicable,) and a (tentative) conclusion.

Please also include authors names, first author’s affiliation, and up to 3 keywords.

You will get notified on acceptance/decline by 15 January 2024. Full papers are expected to be delivered no later than 20 May 2024.

Much hope is placed on deliberative democratic innovations, such as deliberative mini-publics (DMPs) and climate assemblies, to reform and improve democratic environmental governance. Although they remain at the margins, experiments with such deliberative fora have proliferated over the past decade providing an empirical basis that can start to assess whether they can live up to this promise. Research shows that deliberative mini-publics can successfully foster deep, inclusive deliberation, reduce polarisation, and generate novel and sometimes radical proposals for environmental policies. Thus the internal dynamics of deliberative minipublics seem to offer hope for a new form of democratic deliberation over environmental dilemmas.

However, few examples show DMPs having direct policy influence, and the evidence of ‘spillover effects’ impacting the external political and public sphere remains equivocal – the risk being that ‘what happens in a DMP stays in the DMP’. This workshop asks if deliberative minipublics can live up to their promised contribution to environmental governance, what challenges exist and how these can be mitigated?

We call for papers that explore the external impacts of environmentally themed deliberative democratic innovations. Impacts could be on policies, public debate or political discourse; or on the understandings, attitudes and actions of public officials, civil society, scientists or DMP participants themselves.

Relevant questions include how deliberative innovations cope with politics, polarised contexts, and established regimes of power? How and why does their design influence their impact, including how they draw on evidence and experts, how they are governed and coupled to formal decision-making processes?
We welcome empirical papers, as well as theoretical or methodological papers that explore and advance a research agenda for better understanding the potential impacts of DMPs on environmental governance and environmental attitudes.

Please send your paper abstract to the following addresses: lauri.rapeli@abo.fi; tim.daw@su.se and ness2024@abo.fi.

Paper abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and be submitted no later than 30 November 2023. Paper abstracts typically contain: A preliminary title, aim/s and/or research question/s, framework, (a note on data if applicable,) and a (tentative) conclusion. You will get notified on acceptance/decline by 15 January 2024. Full papers are expected to be delivered no later than 20 May 2024.

Theoretical and conceptual studies related to the ethical and political aspects of environmental problems constitute an indispensable element of rigorous scientific work around the challenges of our time. The long-standing tradition of environmental ethics, alongside more recent strands of environmental political theory, have made great contributions to understanding, characterizing, and researching environmental issues and policy responses to climate change, biodiversity loss, and sustainable resource use.

We invite contributions from environmental ethics and environmental political theory to create and co-create shared understanding of the current developments in these realms and their relationship to other environmental social scientific endeavors. We welcome works that represent ethics and political theory, understood broadly and including multidisciplinary approaches. This session aims at developing a dynamic understanding of the topical issues, methodologies, recent insights about long-standing and emerging themes, and nurturing increased collaboration between Nordic

This workshop calls for philosophical and otherwise theoretical or theoretical-empirical (multidisciplinary) papers related to environmental ethics or environmental political theory. Contributions can be diverse from case-specific examinations to classic elaborations on the ethics of human-nonhuman relations, climate ethics, and environmental justice, to name but some examples.

Please send your paper abstract to the following addresses (teea.kortetmaki@jyu.fi; corinna.casi@helsinki.fi; cc: ness2024@abo.fi).

Paper abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and be submitted no later than 30 November 2023. Paper abstracts typically contain: A preliminary title, aim/s and/or research question/s, framework, (a note on data if applicable,) and a (tentative) conclusion. You will get notified on acceptance/decline by 15 January 2024. Full papers are expected to be delivered no later than 20 May 2024.

Biodiversity is threatened in all types of ecosystems across the globe – from mountains and forests to agricultural land and oceans, and in fact also in urban spaces. In parallel, the ability of different ecosystems to provide humans with various services is being undermined. Pollination, provisions of habitats for fish breeding, fertile soil, shade trees and culturally important biotopes illustrate a few of the rich natural values in multifunctional ecosystems that cannot be taken for granted. Despite many good initiatives, governance arrangements – from political strategies to practitioners’ actions – are often insufficient for achieving stated biodiversity targets. One among many reasons is that biodiversity is a cross-cutting issue, impacted by several sectors and providing benefits to many societal spheres, which often renders expert-dominated and compartmentalized governance systems to fail. Much speaks for that a future-oriented transformative governance approach should be integrative (across dimensions, scales, sectors and issues), inclusive and equity-based (empowering marginalized perspectives, acknowledging diverse voices and values), adaptive (enabling reflexivity and learning), and pluralistic (respecting different knowledge systems).

With this in mind the workshop aims to closer identify reasons behind failures in biodiversity governance, and to explore transformative governance pathways for overcoming these hurdles, as well as approaches and methods for co-producing and co-designing such pathways. We also hope to be able to learn from comparing various cases from different landscapes and contexts in a range of countries, and we will discuss how to best go about in research and policy in order to promote multifunctional governance for biodiversity.

This workshop calls for empirical, methodological, conceptual or theoretical papers on the potential roles of future imaginaries and scenario analysis, on approaches to broad and inclusive knowledge integration and co-production, on experiences of deliberative citizen forums and on analyses and recommendations concerning transformative and just policy development for multifunctionality and biodiversity. Please send your paper abstract to the following addresses: michael.gilek@sh.se, mikael.karlsson@geo.uu.se, neil.powell@swedesd.uu.se with cc: ness2024@abo.fi.

Paper abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and be submitted no later than 30 November 2023. Paper abstracts typically contain: A preliminary title, aim/research question, framework, a note on data and a (tentative) conclusion. You will get notified on acceptance/decline by 15 January 2024. Full papers are expected to be delivered no later than 20 May 2024.

Cities are key actors for governing climate change and paving the way for clean energy fu­tures. Urban areas account for a majority of the global population and anthropogenic green­house gas emissions. In addition, cities are more densely populated and polluted than rural areas. This leads to a greater sense of urgency for climate transformations in urban areas. Moreover, the impacts of climate change put increasing pressure on cities through a higher incidence of flooding, heat waves, etc. Scholars and practitioners have stressed that cities are drivers for local climate transformations. Although many cities have set ambitious goals for becoming climate neutral and resilient, it is not always clear whether and how they will ac­tually reach their goals. There is an urgent need for starting and implementing initiati­ves to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and measures to reduce the vulnerability of cities. Al­though numerous pilot and demonstration projects exist, such experiments are often limi­ted in space and time. The underlying causal mechanisms of successful scaling across space and time are still underexplored despite the fact that this knowledge would help to scale ex­periments within cities (locally), beyond cities (regionally) and across cities (nationally and in­ternationally).

This panel aims to bring together both conceptual and empirical contributions from various disciplines that explore urban climate governance and climate transformations. Single and comparative case studies are as welcome as large-n quantitative studies. Contributions may focus on the following topics:

• drivers of local climate action,
• integration of climate mitigation and adaptation at local level,
• novel institutional arrangements at local level (such as climate councils),
• role of cities in multi-level climate governance arrangements (such as the EU Cove­nant of Mayors),
• preconditions for scaling local climate experiments,
• importance of civil society actors (such as Fridays for Future) for urban climate trans­formations,
• impacts of populist movements and the ongoing poly-crises on local climate action.

Please send your paper abstract to the following addresses: (kkern@abo.fi; cc: ness2024@abo.fi). Paper abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and be submitted no later than 30 November 2023. Paper abstracts typically contain: A preliminary title, aim/re­search question, framework, a note on data and a (tentative) conclusion. You will get notified on acceptance/decline by 15 January 2024. Full papers are expected to be delivered no later than 20 May 2024.

In this workshop we explore policy instruments that are fit for purpose given the polycrisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and socio-economic inequality. We invite papers from a wide array of disciplines as we believe new perspectives on how to design policy instruments are needed given the complexity of the sustainability challenges.

According to neoclassical environmental economics climate policy should prioritise cost efficient instruments. To minimise marginal costs, this branch of economics has propagated various economic instruments such as carbon taxes and cap and trade systems. Potential negative effects such as inequalities should be handled separately in line with pareto efficiency principles. In addition, one instrument per environmental problem or market failure is recommended.

While economic instruments most certainly have their place in an effective policy package there are several reasons why we need to explore and develop additional and alternative climate policy measures and portfolios. In order to meet the climate targets the transition to a fossil free and ecologically sustainable economy need to happen fast, within years, and for that we need wide societal support and acceptance for measures taken. This may require a policy package, a deal, which contain not only measures which are perceived as limiting but also welfare reforms or other measures which provide improved quality of life. This is especially critical as the transition takes place against a backdrop of decades of dramatic increases in economic inequalities.

We need measures that go beyond fixing specific market failures but which address the system failures. We know that the climate crisis as well as biodiversity loss is caused by overconsumption of fossil fuels but also other natural resources. And that the consumption is increasingly unevenly distributed. In line with the concept of the doughnut economics the 21st century needs to address overconsumption by the wealthiest but also underconsumption by the poor.

A transformative and fair climate policy portfolio thus need sufficiency policies that meet the criteria of wide acceptance which in turn depend of perceived fairness and improved well-fare. There are a wide range of co-benefits from some climate policies which should be included in order for the socio-economic analysis to be complete.

This workshop calls for empirical, methodological or conceptual/theoretical papers on new ideas for climate policies fit for purpose. Please send your paper abstract to the following addresses (eva.alfredsson@geo.uu.se; cc: ness2024@abo.fi).

Paper abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and be submitted no later than 30 November 2023. Paper abstracts typically contain: A preliminary title, aim/research question, framework, a note on data and a (tentative) conclusion. You will get notified on acceptance/decline by 15 January 2024. Full papers are expected to be delivered no later than 20 May 2024.

Nature-based solutions (NBS) are promoted as a governance tool to tackle ongoing environmental and societal crises. While the importance of participatory planning, or ‘co-creation’, in the NBS design and implementation is already relatively well acknowledged, the underlying socio-political conditions affecting the workability of an NBS in a given context are still not sufficiently understood. Consequently, NBS are often considered as ‘technological fixes’ to environmental problems rather than socio-political solutions that may also support local resilience more broadly as well as efforts for sustainability transformation.

This workshop aims to explore research that unravels the socio-political conditions of NBS design and implementation. Special attention is given to the methods and practices of engaging relevant actors in these processes. This workshop calls for papers that present either theoretical insights or empirical findings with lessons learnt on three main topics:

1) the opportunities and capabilities of all humans, also the most vulnerable and marginalised, to participate in collective action and thereby to influence also their own wellbeing;

2) integration of more-than-human perspective in NBS design and implementation;

3) providing alternative ways to understand and define NBS.

Please send your paper abstract to the following addresses (mia.pihlajamaki@luke.fi; cc: ness2024@abo.fi).

Paper abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and be submitted no later than 30 November 2023. Paper abstracts typically contain: A preliminary title, aim/research question, framework, a note on data and a (tentative) conclusion. You will get notified on acceptance/decline by 15 January 2024. Full papers are expected to be delivered no later than 20 May 2024.

Growing number of citizen science initiatives demonstrate the potential of recruiting great masses of volunteering citizens in the production of environmental data on various issues from littering and air and water quality monitoring to biodiversity. In addition to broadening, complementing, and speeding up data production, citizen science is envisioned to restore public trust in science, enhance connectivity to nature and empower people to identify and resolve problems in their living environments. On the other hand, critics call for more nuanced understanding of the quality and outcomes of the novel interactions that these citizen science initiatives introduce between citizens, science and policy making. For example, it has been argued that despite engaging the publics, citizen science prioritises professional epistemologies, serves pre-defined policy goals and frameworks and downplays volunteers’ motivations. Furthermore, social sciences have their own, often community-driven traditions of knowledge coproduction, such as action research and co-research. Yet, environmental public administration and scientific communities still appear unable to value or lack the practical capacity to implement such community-based initiatives to redesign their strategies and policies.

This workshop scrutinizes the underlying institutional, normative and epistemological challenges of citizen science and its capacity to stimulate transformative action and societal change in societies facing sustainability problems, addressing, for example, the following questions:

This workshop calls for papers that explore alternative forms of citizen engagement in science and discuss how they can contribute to rethinking the institutions and policies shaping sustainability transformation. The papers can be theoretically, empirically or methodologically oriented. Please send your paper abstract to the following addresses (taru.peltola@uef.fi, monika.suskevics@emu.ee; cc: ness2024@abo.fi).

Paper abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and be submitted no later than 30 November 2023. Paper abstracts typically contain: A preliminary title, aim/research question, framework, a note on data and a (tentative) conclusion. You will get notified on acceptance/decline by 15 January 2024. Full papers are expected to be delivered no later than 20 May 2024.

Global agendas, national initiatives and business actors are all increasingly driving a transformation from reliance on fossil fuel to the use of renewable energy sources in efforts to reduce anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases and their contributions to climate change. Today, 192 countries and the EU have ratified or acceded the historic 2015 Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty entailing a global commitment to reach 45% emissions reduction by 2030 and net zero by 2050. Thus, there is enormous pressure to meet increasing energy demands by massively expanding the production of biomass-based, hydro, wind and solar energy. This is widely regarded as essential for achieving global sustainability ambitions and to accelerate our pathway to a zero-emission society. However, the extensive interventions involved in such initiatives have widely varying effects on human communities and individuals. This has spurred a debate on what characterizes a just or unjust transition, and the consequences for society and for different actors. Energy efficiency and renewable energy development are at the core of Europe’s commitment to a clean energy transition that serves the needs of citizens, economic development, and the environment. But how is this implemented in reality?

This workshop calls for papers on a broad range of topics that critically examine the transition to green energy, from the local to the global level. We welcome papers with different theoretical, methodological, and empirical approaches, as long as they that provide insights on the potentials and/or pitfalls of the ongoing transition to sustainable energy systems. We would particularly like to see papers that propose or develop new theoretical perspectives and methods to address the green transition in a Nordic perspective. Please send your paper abstract to the following addresses (therese.bjarstig@umu.se; cc: ness2024@abo.fi).

Paper abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and be submitted no later than 30 November 2023. Paper abstracts typically contain: A preliminary title, aim/research question, framework, a note on data and a (tentative) conclusion. You will get notified on acceptance/decline by 15 January 2024. Full papers are expected to be delivered no later than 20 May 2024.

In Europe, the policy developments have created the phase of rapidly accelerating energy transitions (Araújo 2023). Renewable energy policies (EC 2019a; b), twin transitions connecting digitalisation to environmental policies (EC 2022a) and now the need to abandon Russian energy dependence (EC 2022b). As a result, the European energy landscape is shifting fast, but the clean energy system can come in several shapes and sizes from highly centralised to dispersed and nuanced (Rogge et al. 2020). This situation opens discussion on the agency and roles of citizens in the changing energy system. Especially the energy crises of the past years have highlighted the need for citizen energy practices and skills in improving resilience in the volatile times.

Our workshop aims to deliberate, examine and imagine the various roles of citizens and community energy developments in the current phase of the energy transitions. The Nordic and Baltic countries provide an interesting context for policy implementation with different historical and material underpinnings (e.g. Apajalahti et al. 2023). The workshop focuses on the diversity of emerging communities, the positioning of citizens in the energy policies as well as new forms of digital mediation enabling energy citizenship. Moreover, the issues of justice will be given special attention.

This workshop calls for papers with empirical and conceptual contributions that focus either on the citizen and community energy developments in the European context or on the policy developments – or both. More polemic provocations are also welcomed to spice up discussions. Depending on coherence of the contributions, a special issue (e.g. Energy Research and Social Science, Energy Policy) will be considered. Please send your paper abstract to the following addresses (jani.lukkarinen@syke.fi and senja.laakso@tuni.fi; cc: ness2024@abo.fi).

Paper abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and be submitted no later than 30 November 2023. Paper abstracts typically contain: A preliminary title, aim/research question, framework, a note on data and a (tentative) conclusion. You will get notified on acceptance/decline by 15 January 2024. Full papers are expected to be delivered no later than 20 May 2024.

Education for Sustainability encourages collaboration and co-production between students, teachers, businesses, societal actors, and other stakeholders to foster sustainability competencies such as strategic competence, interpersonal competence, and systems thinking competence (Wiek, 2011). The aim of this workshop is to encourage knowledge sharing on collaborative and co-producing teaching and learning activities within the scope of Education for Sustainability. This is of relevance to the Sustainability Development Goal 4 (Quality Education) to “ensure all learners acquire knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development”. Focusing on how the co-production of knowledge across and between all stakeholders in the sustainability landscape is key to addressing complex, wicked, societal challenges.

In this workshop we invite contributions within the following topics to encourage knowledge sharing and collaboration between participants:

Please send your paper abstract to the following addresses anna.granberg@abo.fi; gallags6@Tcd.ie; ness2024@abo.fi.

Paper abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and be submitted no later than 30 November 2023. Paper abstracts typically contain: A preliminary title, aim/research question, framework, a note on data and a (tentative) conclusion. You will get notified on acceptance/decline by 15 January 2024. Full papers are expected to be delivered no later than 20 May 2024.

To cope with climate change, planetary extinction and other persistent and interlinked problems confronting contemporary societies, a radical transition is necessary from current practices towards a more sustainable way of life. While science has given sound evidence on the need for change (e.g. IPCC report, 2022), governments have only recently systematically adopted laws and policies to make the change happen. In the European context, a pertinent example is the adoption of the EU’s Green Deal, a policy and legislative programme aiming to accelerate the shift towards sustainability. While the legislative programme of the Green Deal has environmental objectives, it also is a strategy for economic growth and restructuring the economy. The Green Deal means a stronger role of the state in coordinating the economy, although market mechanisms remain the core instrument for the coordination. As a result, the law affecting the renewal of the economy and functioning of markets are at the core of the transformation. The consequence is an increased need to pay attention to areas of law that affect the functioning of markets, including environmental law, but also other horizontal and cross-cutting legal fields. Inter alia, these areas include intellectual property law to incentivize sustainability innovations; competition law to promote co-operations and partnerships amongst firms and organizations which lead to enhanced sustainable effects; financial law to re-direct the use of private resources; public procurement law and state aid law to re-direct the use of public resources; and contracts, which are crucial to draw together the interests of private, public and hybrid sectors.

Despite the evident relevance of legislation as a mode of governance, there is to date only scant research focusing directly and in a holistic manner on the role of law for sustainability transitions. Thus, this workshop aims to trigger intra- and inter-disciplinary discussions on the role of law for sustainability transitions, from the perspective of all these various relevant legal streams.

This workshop calls for papers from any field of research exploring the role of law in sustainability transitions with possible topics including frames of constitutional law for legal and policy action; the ability of law to promote technological developments while addressing also the ethical challenges associated with the use of those technologies; the role of law to direct private and public investments for fostering welfare and the public good; fostering the public good through new ownership models and/or property concepts; and other roles of law promoting systemic change of production and consumption systems. Papers may be conceptual, doctrinal, methodological or empirical.  Please send your paper abstract to the following addresses (Jukka.Simila@ulapland.fi; Rosa.Ballardini@ulapland.fi cc: ness2024@abo.fi).

Paper abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and be submitted no later than 30 November 2023. Paper abstracts typically contain: A preliminary title, aim/research question, framework, a note on data and a (tentative) conclusion. You will get notified on acceptance/decline by 15 January 2024. Full papers are expected to be delivered no later than 20 May 2024.

,This workshop addresses the role of techno-scientific promises – broadly understood as “wishful enactments of a desired future” of a given technological innovation – in environmental policies and politics in particular, and in shaping the future trajectories of societies in general. Such promises are performative: they legitimise projects and their advocates, mobilise resources and orient activities, seeking to convince investors, decision-makers, and broader publics. In this workshop, we focus on the roles that the various communities and institutions play in shaping the construction, maintenance, reproduction, and deconstruction of these promises.

The existing literature has underlined that techno-scientific promises are co-produced, through the confrontation between the communities of “promise-constructors” and “promise-deconstructors”. The analysis has focused on the discursive battles between promise narratives and their counter-narratives, including their institutional and material embeddedness – the ways in which such battles simultaneously shape and are shaped by the prevailing institutional contexts and material realities. It has examined the layering of promises that manifest themselves at multiple overlapping scales, in broad visions of a desirable future (e.g., the promise of progress or economic growth), general technology promises (e.g., nanotechnologies, or the small modular nuclear reactors), and specific technical designs and projects (e.g., diverse applications of nanotechnology or individual SMR designs). The promise scholarship has elaborated on the specificity of promises – their relational nature and their function of building legitimacy and credibility for particular technical solutions – in relation to similar concepts such as collectively held and relatively stable imaginaries and the more specific visions promoted by actor coalitions.

We seek to fill two interrelated gaps in the literature on the construction, maintenance, reproduction, and deconstruction of techno-scientific promises. First, we call for greater clarity on the role of the diverse communities in promise-construction, whether these be communities of promise, conviction, or practice; epistemic communities, project communities, or professional communities; or again, advocacy coalitions, or discourse coalitions. Second, we draw attention to institutions as a relatively overlooked element in co-production, alongside “the technical” and “the social”.

This workshop invites both theoretical and empirical papers, from various fields of technological innovation and development. Particularly welcome are contributions that explore the roles of communities by drawing on and clarifying the distinctions between similar yet distinct concepts and theoretical traditions, such as STS and sociological institutionalism, with its conception of the simultaneously enabling and constraining functions of institutions.

Please send your paper abstract to the following addresses (markku.lehtonen@upf.edu; matti.kojo@lut.fi; hanna-mari.husu@lut.fi; cc: ness2024@abo.fi).

Paper abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and be submitted no later than 30 November 2023. Paper abstracts typically contain: A preliminary title, aim/research question, framework, a note on data and a (tentative) conclusion. You will get notified on acceptance/decline by 15 January 2024. Full papers are expected to be delivered no later than 20 May 2024.

Dominant narratives of green growth and sustainable development rest upon an uncritical perception of technology. As a manifestation of this, the positive role of science and technology is often taken for granted for desired social and ecological change in the environmental social sciences as well. As exemplified by the endorsement of a range of “green” technologies, such as renewable energy, electric cars, and smart cities, technological optimism is now also spreading into even previously critical schools of thought, like degrowth and political ecology.

As a reaction to this, we want to explore how various modern techno-scientific positions originate from and perpetuate the capitalist business-as-usual, and the ethos of progress, and facilitate the increasing exploitation of people, local environments, and the planet as a whole. Further, we question the incipient optimism toward new technologies and scientific discoveries and invite explorations of alternative conceptions of technology for the environmental social sciences. Therefore, we ask the participants to (co-)produce alternative knowledge and understandings of technology for sustainability.

This workshop calls for papers that critically engage with the questions of technology. The contributions can be philosophical, theoretical, and empirical.

Please send your paper abstract to the following addresses (toni.ruuska@helsinki.fi; cc: ness2024@abo.fi).

Paper abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and be submitted no later than 30 November 2023. Paper abstracts typically contain: A preliminary title, aim/research question, framework, a note on data and a (tentative) conclusion. You will get notified on acceptance/decline by 15 January 2024. Full papers are expected to be delivered no later than 20 May 2024.

In the context of pressing global efforts to decarbonize the maritime sector, our workshop, ”Sustainability transitions in the maritime transportation industry,” explores the ongoing changes in the sea logistics enabled by policy, innovations, and strategic moves by different industry players. We delve into the challenges of changing the prevailing socio-technical regimes and the agency of policymakers, business actors, and other stakeholders in shaping sustainable transitions, mitigating environmental impact, and driving the decarbonization of the shipping industry.

As a significant contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions, the maritime industry faces mounting scrutiny to reduce its carbon footprint. A nuanced understanding of the interplay between evolving regulations, technological advancements, and systemic impacts of different initiatives like, for example, green maritime corridors, electrification of ships, and the development of alternative maritime fuel infrastructures, is therefore crucial.

This workshop aims to:

We invite scholarly contributions that explore various dimensions of sustainability transitions in the maritime transportation sector, including but not limited to: Comprehensive analyses of policy instruments and regulatory frameworks shaping the development and operation of different initiatives aimed at maritime transport decarbonization; exploration of technological innovations that facilitate the transition to sustainable maritime transportation; studies exploring the role of bottom-up, industrial initiatives in achieving sustainability transitions in the focal sector; analyses of institutional barriers and necessary institutional work for different sustainability initiatives in the maritime transportation sector; investigations of systemic interlinkages between various kinds of anticipated infrastructures and other aspects related to processes of anticipatory infrastructuring; and holistic assessments of the socioeconomic and environmental impacts triggered by initiatives aimed at decarbonising maritime transportation.

In alignment with the theme of the conference, our workshop promises to provide critical insights into how industry and policy-led initiatives serve as key drivers of the necessary sustainable transition in the maritime sector, and offers a space for fruitful discussions on their broader implications for the shipping industry and beyond.

This workshop calls for papers that discuss sustainability transitions in the maritime transportation industry both empirically and theoretically.

Please send your paper abstract to the following address: anastasia.tsvetkova@abo.fi (cc: ness2024@abo.fi).

Paper abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and be submitted no later than 30 November 2023. Paper abstracts typically contain: A preliminary title, aim/research question, framework, a note on data and a (tentative) conclusion. You will get notified on acceptance/decline by 15 January 2024. Full papers are expected to be delivered no later than 20 May 2024.

Serious gaming and different digital tools building on machine learning and artificial intelligence have proliferated in the recent years in solving various environmental and sustainability challenges, such as climate change and biodiversity loss. New digital tools seek to expand our capacities to simulate, monitor, assess and govern the earth system (Voosen 2020), and increasingly social activities. For example, the use of urban digital twins has expanded to address urban planning challenges related to social-ecological interactions and to tackle complex problems, such as adaptation to climate change. Serious gaming is used to steer collaborative decision-making to solve a variety of challenges from agriculture to urban planning.

With digital tools soon to become mainstream in steering collaborative planning and governance at the local level (Deng et al. 2021), it is pertinent to critically explore and seize their potential in understanding not only the social-ecological interactions, but also their usefulness and usability in decision-making. While digital tools are designed to support decision-making, it is yet unclear how to organise co-production processes to harness the power of digital solutions in solving complex sustainability challenges and to ensure demand-driven science production.

This session brings together these cutting-edge questions in research and practice of addressing complex sustainability challenges, and invites papers focusing on:

This workshop calls for conceptual, methodological, and empirical papers that use serious gaming, digital twins or other AI and machine-learning based technologies in solving sustainability problems. We especially welcome empirical contributions exploring and/or testing the use of such technologies with the local governance stakeholders.

Please, send your paper abstract to the following addresses (Alexandra.malmstrom@helsinki.fi; cc: ness2024@abo.fi).

Paper abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and be submitted no later than 30 November 2023. Paper abstracts typically contain: A preliminary title, aim/research question, framework, a note on data and a (tentative) conclusion. You will get notified on acceptance/decline by 15 January 2024. Full papers are expected to be delivered no later than 20 May 2024.

The era of increasing urbanization, alienation from the natural environment, growing digitisation and algorithmic futures is prompting some people to seek and form a stronger bond with the natural environment through their working life. Examples can be found in, for instance, back-to-the-land movement, maker and doer movements, greening of jobs, small-scale farming and community supported agriculture, and initiatives for restoring and protecting nature. All these phenomena include paid and unpaid labour, and work beyond traditional wage labour norms and institutions. These new forms of work create new ways of knowing and understanding more-than-human nature.

At the same time, working with animals and ecosystems may require willful ignorance and unnoticing. For example, certain forms of forestry depend on knowledge production that ignores the role of biodiversity for human and more-than-human flourishing, and industrial animal production is premised on not noticing that animals are conscious and capable of emotions, relationality, and suffering.

In this session we are interested in how people create relationships with the natural environment through their work and how these relations are (un)noticed. To better understand how knowing and unknowing emerge in these multispecies labouring relations, we treat work as a site for embodied knowledge. Examples of such embodied engagement in different landscapes, include but are not limited to, agriculture, forestry, as well as work in industrial settings, and blue- and white-collar jobs. These embodied ways of knowing are partial and relational, and understanding them requires skilful listening and translation, and attention to unknowing and ignorance.

Regardless of how conscious people are of the fact that their work is part of multispecies communities, their knowledge and practices are always generated in them. How could more-than-human ways of knowing be allowed to speak back to, for example, academic knowledge production?

We are interested in presentations that explore knowledge and embodiment in working with nature, nature-work relationships, and the work done to enable such studies. We invite empirical, theoretical, conceptual, methodological, and artistic proposals that may focus on multispecies work, more-than-human labour; embodied knowing and learning in multispecies communities; knowledge production about and in multispecies communities; forms of ignorance and non-knowing regarding more-than-human labour; soil work; work beyond paid labour; ecological livelihoods; everyday work, work practices and/or methodological choices and questions. Please send your and abstract of your proposal to the following addresses (eeva.houtbeckers@utu.fi; cc: ness2024@abo.fi).

Abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and be submitted no later than 30 November 2023. Abstracts typically contain a preliminary title, aim/research question, framework, a note on empirical material, and a (tentative) conclusion. Yet, we encourage to follow a format that suits the proposal. You will get notified on acceptance/decline by 15 January 2024. Full papers are expected to be delivered no later than 20 May 2024.

To reach sustainability goals, a transition of the transport system is necessary. Regardless of what form the transition will take, it will inevitably affect the everyday mobility of citizens. Scholars suggest that citizen engagement is a vital part of transition processes as it can strengthen the legitimacy of sustainability policy. Other research highlights that reactions against sustainability policies can also galvanise protest movements. This emphasizes the importance of understanding the manifolded aspects of sustainability policy on the public. There is therefore a need to rethink what citizenship and citizen engagement in transport and mobility research and practice is and can be.

Compared to environmental and energy research, there is an absence of literature on mobility and citizenship approaches which explores various aspects of citizenship in the transport sector (Sørensen, Hanson & Rye, 2023). When citizens are engaged in mobility project, they are often understood as passive users or market agents (Ryghaug & Skjølsvold, 2021). In fact, the citizen role is one among many, alongside other roles such as users and customers. We are interested in comparing these different roles and discussing the particularities for citizen participation in this context.

As scholars, we need to document, analyse and critically comment on current initiatives and suggest new modes of thinking related to citizenship, citizen engagement and mobility. In line with Spinney, Aldred and Brown (2015), in this workshop we understand citizenship as more than membership in a national state, but as processual and embedded in social and material relations.

The aim of the workshop is to gather scholars working with mobility and transport research at the intersection of citizen engagement within this field as a vital contribution for Nordic environmental research

We welcome papers that raise the following topics:

Please send your paper abstract to the convenors (se e-mail addresses above, and cc to: ness2024@abo.fi).

Paper abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and be submitted no later than 30 November 2023. Paper abstracts typically contain: A preliminary title, aim/research question, framework, a note on data and a (tentative) conclusion. You will get notified on acceptance/decline by 15 January 2024. Full papers are expected to be delivered no later than 20 May 2024.

What do urban sustainability transformations look like from the fringes of urban society? What kinds of places, perspectives, or relationships do city-centric climate agendas exclude or obscure? How do urban sustainability projects reshape rural imaginaries, landscapes, and livelihoods, and vice versa? From where and how might radical alternative imaginations for sustainable futures be constructed?

Rapid urbanization and urban expansion in the face of the climate crisis have recast cities globally “from a sustainability problem (…) to a sustainability solution” (Angelo & Wachsmuth, 2020). Not only are cities often particularly vulnerable to the ramifications of climate change, they are also considered the essential sites for envisioning sustainable future life. This ‘eco-cityism’ (Janos, 2020) coincides with a lively debate in critical urban studies that has deconstructed and defamiliarized cities as normative sites and objects of analysis. Urban scholars drawing on postcolonial (see Jazeel, 2018; Roy, 2016; Simone, 2020), feminist (see Peake, 2016; Peake & Rieker, 2013), and critical theory (see Brenner & Katsikis, 2021; Brenner & Schmid, 2015) have reconceptualized the urban and the rural as incomplete, uneven, and contested historical categories, and urbanization as continuous and multisited rearrangement rather than linear development centred on cities.

These ideas carry critical implications to the study of urban sustainability. To examine and evaluate how aspirations and projects for sustainability are remaking urban life and space, we argue that analyses must expand focus from cities towards territorial relations, politics, and imaginations. Moreover, instead of totalizing visions, climate interventions to rebuild “non-destructive and viable ways of life” (Malterre-Barthes & Dzierzawska, 2021) must be attuned to and informed by diverse everyday realities, as well as the uneven power relationships and social effects they reproduce across wider geographies. To do so, researchers need to expand focus from the icons and moonshots towards the ordinary, the in-between, and the incomplete.

This session explores and expands critical geographies of urban sustainability in the Nordic countries. Given the unique trajectories and patterns of late industrialization and urbanization in northern Europe, there is both fertile ground and a pressing need to engage with ideas and processes of urban sustainability beyond urban centres and epistemic cores. We thus invite contributions interrogating Nordic ideas, spaces, or processes of urban sustainability through the fringes (Ortega, 2020); including, but not limited to, urban or industrial margins (Anguelovski et al., 2018; Janos, 2020), constitutive outsides (Jazeel, 2018; Roy, 2016), suburban peripheries (Keil, 2020), ruins (Lowenhaupt Tsing, 2015; Paprocki, 2019), or frontiers (Knuth, 2016; Safransky, 2014; Wachsmuth et al., 2016).

This workshop calls for empirical and theoretical papers considering any of the following aspects of urban sustainability:

We welcome contributions outside of these topics as long as they respond to the overall theme of the session. Please send your paper abstract to the following addresses: h.saari@lse.ac.uk and eija.merilainen@oru.se, cc: ness2024@abo.fi.

Paper abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and be submitted no later than 30 November 2023. Paper abstracts typically contain: A preliminary title, aim/research question, framework, a note on data and a (tentative) conclusion. You will get notified on acceptance/decline by 15 January 2024. Full papers are expected to be delivered no later than 20 May 2024.

In 2006 the sociologist and political scientist Francesca Polletta declared that “In recent years, storytelling has been promoted in surprising places” (1). In this instance she was referring to what has been called by Christian Salmon and others as “the narrative turn” (2010, 39), a widespread cultural shift towards an interest in story as a tool for communication and meaning-making. Over the past two decades those involved in sustainability communication, in particular, and those promoting learning and co-creation about, and engagement with, the unfolding climate emergency, have become increasingly interested in the role that storytelling can play in increasing levels of participation in the public discourse, especially amongst those whose voices are less commonly heard in such discussions. Storytelling is a means of capturing and communicating the experiences of those communities most vulnerable to a changing environment and that experiential knowledge can then be brought into discussion with other forms of knowledge: scientific, technological, bureaucratic, political, economic, legal, and so on.

This is storytelling as a way of knowing the world, as a knowledge system, that sits alongside other knowledge systems, albeit in a hierarchical system where it regularly sits at the bottom of the pile. Jana-Axinja Paschen and Ray Ison (2013) identify an increasing number of studies and bodies of work within sustainability science that have attempted to engage more seriously with storytelling as a tool for knowledge-sharing and resilience-building amongst communities.

Storytelling is, however, more than simply an approach for capturing and communicating knowledge. It is also a tool for co-producing knowledge. In other words, it is both a knowledge system and a thinking system, moving beyond simple knowledge creation and doing, and into the realm of future problem-solving and resilience-building. Storytelling is a process that has evolved over millennia to enable us to think about and understand the world. It allows us to test ideas of our own, interrogate the ideas of others and discriminate between truth and lies. Whilst storytelling is often equated with lies and fantasy, it is, in fact, a truth-seeking tool, one that is much needed in a post-truth world and which allows us to imagine our possible futures. The use and, indeed, abuse of storytelling in recent years is what makes it so urgent, so dangerous and so effective. As the critic and essayist John Berger wrote: “Stories are one way of sharing the belief that justice is imminent” (2016, 96).

In this workshop we invite delegates who have worked with story, wanted to work with story, or tried and failed to work with story, in relation to sustainability and knowledge co-production, to come together to share their thoughts and experiences. In other words, we invite them to share their stories and in doing so, we will use our stories as a way of thinking about stories, storytelling, and the rich possibilities and frustrating difficulties that such work presents for building sustainable futures.

This workshop calls for presentations and provocations on any aspect of ‘story work’ in relation to sustainability and knowledge co-production. Presentations may take the form of, but are not limited to, traditional academic papers, project case studies, and showcases of creative work, and may offer reflections on, for example, methodology, creative practice, community building, public engagement and policy development. We are keen to encourage contributions from a broad range of stakeholders, including researchers, practitioners, community activists, creative artists and policymakers and welcome presentations that pose pertinent and challenging questions, as much as those that suggest answers and possible solutions. Please send your paper abstract to the following addresses: m.wilson2@lboro.ac.uk ; cc: ness2024@abo.fi, clearly marked in the subject line: ‘NESS2024 STORYTELLING’.

Proposals should be no longer than 300 words and be submitted no later than 30 November 2023. These should take the form that best suits the type of presentation being proposed, but typically might contain: a preliminary title, a statement of the aim, research question, or challenge being addressed, a description of the framework or approach taken, a brief description of the activity undertaken, or a note on data collection, and a (tentative) conclusion or set of new questions that have arisen from the work. You will be notified of acceptance/decline by 15 January 2024. Full papers/presentations in a format that will enable sharing in advance are expected to be delivered no later than 20 May 2024.

The idea that there is no social justice without epistemic and ontological justice – i.e., that social injustice is intrinsically linked to the imposed colonial, patriarchal, racial, gendered, and capitalist mindsets, logics, and ways of being – is finally gaining ground in sustainability science research.

There is an increasing awareness about (and a critique of) the role the Eurocentric Modernity and universalistic Science play in defining sustainability pathways in policy and research, delegitimizing, and erasing other ways of knowing, being and relating (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2018; Blaser 2019). In particular, Modernity perceives humans as separate from nature, denies the full humanity of some people and the existences of their ways of being and knowing (that do not separate between people and the lands), and finally it uses the European or Western economic development as a yardstick for universally desirable constructs. To this day, the dominance and hegemony of these anthropocentric, colonial, patriarchal, capitalist, and linear onto-epistemic assumptions over other ways of knowing and being continues to (re)produce epistemic, cognitive, and ontological violences, threatening place-based ancestral knowledges, and practices that are vital for sustaining healthy relations towards the natural world (Gebara et al. 2023; Ehrnström-Fuentes 2022, Ramcilovic-Suominen 2022).

The misguided assumption that the Eurocentric knowledges that legitimize these events possess some form of ‘scientific neutrality’ depoliticizes and further denies the onto-epistemic struggles that define how life is lived on land. As Lahsen and Turnhout (2021) argue, these onto-epistemic injustices used in the name of sustainability are one of the main barriers for transformations towards just socioecological futures. We argue for the need for forms of collective unlearning that can shake the pervasive onto-epistemic assumptions underlying Eurocentric Modernity to their core, undoing the current onto-epistemic violences towards other ways of being, knowing, and doing sustainability on the ground.

This session calls for theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions that explore: (i) what dominant mindsets, assumed scientific truths or myths, and ontological logics require unlearning and undoing, (ii) the multiple and diverse processes of unlearning Eurocentric truth claims and/or undoing Modernity, and (iii) the methodological implications for epistemic and ontological justice and/or for transformations towards just socioecological futures. We are particularly interested in contributions that deal with how to ‘unlearn modernity’ and its accompanying colonial, capitalist and extractivist practices that do not allow for, nor acknowledge, the existence of other ways of knowing and being in relation to nature/land/place.

This workshop calls for papers from Indigenous, anti-colonial, decolonial, feminist and degrowth perspectives and as well as contributions that apply, explore and advance novel methodologies tentative to the plurality of ways of being and knowing the land, citizen sciences, and embodied spaces of diverse knowledge cultivation for radical and just sustainability transformations. Papers that deal with how this unlearning process impacts or is enabled by the interface of science and policy are also welcomed. Please send your paper abstract to the following addresses (maria.ehrnstrom-fuentes@hanken.fi; sabaheta.ramcilovik-suominen@luke.fi, katri.vihma@helsinki.fi, cc: ness2024@abo.fi).

Paper abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and be submitted no later than 30 November 2023. Paper abstracts typically contain: A preliminary title, aim/research question, framework, a note on data and a (tentative) conclusion. You will get notified on acceptance/decline by 15 January 2024. Full papers are expected to be delivered no later than 20 May 2024.

Experts play a significant role in shaping global and local norms on how societies should respond to the climate crisis. However, current scholarship on climate expertise has not fully addressed recent transformations in the field, specifically the emergence and increasingly influential role of what we term ‘green transition expertise’. While existing research has provided highly nuanced studies of relations between experts, states, and international organizations, it has tended to cast the issue of expertise as one of climate science consensus construction (in the transnational realm) and the issue of state action as determined largely by failed (or limited) intergovernmental collaboration. To advance the study of climate expertise in the green transition, we invite environmental social science scholars to develop a ‘post-IPCC’ research agenda that moves the field from a focus on the activities of transnational climate experts to more domestically embedded ‘green transition experts’.

A post-IPCC agenda sets out to understand how experts shape societal action on the green transition and how states and organizations actively assemble green transition expertise, including the actors recognized as appropriate members of the emerging cadre of transition experts. This includes analysis of how state and corporate action is conditioned by informal expert networks, partnerships, and inter-expert competition about what should constitute climate expertise and which forms of expertise matter. We invite scholars to develop a research agenda that, among other things, incorporates a three-pronged approach to studying green transition expertise: (1) focusing on expert actors to understand who is recognized as a legitimate green transition expert over time and their location, (2) examining expert content to understand the nature of green transition expert work, including what gets left out, and (3) considering expert context to examine the institutional, cultural, and political factors that shape the relationship between green transition expertise and climate action.

Papers may address, but are not limited to, the following themes related to green transition expertise:

This workshop calls for papers on the study of experts in the green transition. Contributions can be theoretical, methodological, or empirical. Please send your paper abstract to the following addresses (slf.ioa@cbs.dk & jha.ioa@cbs.dk; cc: ness2024@abo.fi).

Paper abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and be submitted no later than 30 November 2023. Paper abstracts typically contain: A preliminary title, aim/research question, framework, a note on data and a (tentative) conclusion. You will get notified on acceptance/decline by 15 January 2024. Full papers are expected to be delivered no later than 20 May 2024.