Doctoral Defense 6 October 2023 - Darin Wahl 'Experimenting with sustainability transformations: A study of Urban Living Labs in the food, water and energy nexus’
– Published 20 September 2023
Doctoral Defense - Darin Wahl - 6 October 2023, 13:15
'Experimenting with sustainability transformations: A study of Urban Living Labs in the food, water and energy nexus’
Place: Ostrom, Josephson, Biskopsgatan 5, Lund
Supervisors: Barry Ness and Christine Wamsler, LUCSUS
Opponent: Frank Sejersen, University of Copenhagen
Scholars and practitioners increasingly emphasize the importance of transdisciplinary and experimental approaches for understanding and addressing sustainability challenges. While there is widespread agreement that human society must undergo deep and radical changes, or so-called transformation, how transformation happens depends on multiple and dynamic factors in local contexts. In this thesis, I explore how to advance experimental transdisciplinary sustainability approaches to facilitate the collaborative development of solutions to sustainability problems and contribute to transformation. I use a transdisciplinary and real-world experimentation research approach called Urban Living Labs (ULL) that focuses on specific sustainability challenges in the food-water-energy nexus. I explore the intersection of these to understand how interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research can contribute to the co-production of action and solution-oriented knowledge. Moreover, I use a combination of interdisciplinary, participatory, and reflexive methods to investigate the processes of transdisciplinary sustainability research and the roles of researchers in these processes.