The call for abstract submissions to the Beyond Crisis/Beyond normal conference in Trondheim this September is 10 days away!

Website: https://www.ntnu.edu/web/energy/society/team-society-conference

Confirmed keynotes and performance

  • Kirsten Jenkins (Edinburgh, UK).
  • Ferne Edwards (University of Surrey, UK)
  • Steve Williams aka Drusnoise (Electronic music producer, sound artist and co-founder of @berlinmodularsociety and is curator of @sustain.berlin, and energy transitions researcher)

Session themes:

Participants are asked to submit an abstract to one of the following sessions through this portal. Details on session organization and calls for papers can be found here.

  • The Past, Present, and Future of Ocean Governance: Can we sustainably organize the ocean?
  • Geographical perspectives on just and sustainable transitions
  • Energy Narratives
  • Towards a better conceptualization of agency and coalitions building in sustainability transitions
  • Justice game – interactive session on energy justice
  • Land use challenges: Sustainability, governance, and social and political responses
  • Real sustainable mobility innovations – disrupting/breaking with the techno-economic paradigm
  • Bridging concerns for justice and speed: the dilemmas and tradeoffs of accelerated transitions
  • Changing to remain the same? The relationship between preservation and change in innovation
  • Soul searching the flexibility concept
  • Environmental behavior spillover
  • The politics of decarbonization/Net Zero
  • Transitions in tension: public engagement, social justice and conflict
  • Low-income groups and the super-rich in sustainability transitions
  • A postcapitalist world is possible: A postcapitalist world is now
  • Nordic renewable energy success stories
  • Philosophical and ethical perspectives on the ocean economy
  • Multi-sectoral transitions: mechanisms, processes and agency
  • Automated mobility: transition enabler or disabler
  • Anthropology and the New Energy Complex: Critical Infrastructure, Sustainable Futures, War
  • Biodiversity – politics, knowledge, practice’
  • Building capacity for climate change adaptation through involving citizens

Conference description

We live in times characterized by environmental, social, and economic turmoil. The global temperature is rising, while the loss of biodiversity is accelerating. Social, economic, and spatial inequalities are increasing, and socio-political polarization makes compromises across diverse interests difficult.

As words like “shifts”, “transitions” or “transformations” are increasingly becoming household concepts in mainstream policy making, the social sciences and humanities (SSH) can and should play a pivotal role both in making sense of the conditions that we live under, and in formulating ways forward for contemporary societies.

Beyond crisis/Beyond normal will be an essential meeting place for SSH scholars broadly working under the umbrella of sustainability. The conference comes at a crucial juncture for contemporary societies. On the one hand, immediate crises and war color key debates. On the other hand, one must re-think what new normals we might produce on the other side of these crises.

The conference recognizes the need to move beyond mere technological solutionism, to fundamentally probe what it could mean to live in just and sustainable societies and how these can be achieved. This entails grappling with difficult questions such as how societies should be organized, why it is so difficult to break out of extractive fossil fueled capitalism, how to deal with and make sense of controversies and trade-offs, as well as probing what justice might entail.

The conference will explore aspects of sustainability across everyday life, politics, technology, art, and innovation through a broad range of disciplinary and cross-disciplinary perspectives. The conference seeks to enable new academic conversations, strengthen ties between SSH communities, and increase the collective impact of SSH research, perspectives, and conversations on broader societal developments.