Student symposium: Historical Transition Studies

DUE TO THE DUTCH COVID SITUATION, WE WILL MOVE THIS SYMPOSIUM ONLINE

TU/e Symposium on Historical Transition Studies

Location: Atlas 1.65 –> ONLINE

Sustainable innovation and transitions are deeply temporal phenomena. Innovation choices of one generation affect the needs of later ones. Sociotechnical transitions too are long-term processes that may take decades to unfold, sometimes even centuries. And yet, the bulk of innovation and transition studies research has a ‘here and now’ character. A long-term perspective uncovers many hidden innovation and transition dynamics and conflicts. But how can we produce academic knowledge about this, and how can academic insights inform current sustainable innovation and transition efforts?

At the symposium, we will discuss diverse academic research approaches to this issue. In doing so, however, we will turn the tables. TU/e scholars will profit from the expertise of master’s students who have put different research approaches to a test. In essays for the course 0EM130 Modern societies in transition, they have engaged in-depth with different concepts and their analytical value and will share their experiences in different thematic panels. Their inputs will also feed into a wider discussion on the potentials and limitations of a field we might tentatively call Historical Transition Studies.

Agenda

16:30     Introduction by Erik van der Vleuten

16:40     Overview of the different groups by the lecturers

16:55     Short presentations by the students on their essay topics

17:10     Roundtable discussion: Putting the approach of Historical Transitions Studies to the test. What is its explanatory value, especially from a global perspective?

17:40     Concluding Discussion: Why engaging with historical transitions as an engineering student? And to the senior scholars: How to increase the outreach of our discipline within the academic landscape?

18:00     End and informal get-together in De Zwarte Doos [1]

[1] Note the definition of the term symposium in Oxford Languages: “1. a conference or meeting to discuss a particular subject. 2. a drinking party or convivial discussion, especially as held in ancient Greece after a banquet (…).”