The research group conducts inter- and transdisciplinary research on sustainability transformations. We focus on issues related to governing, navigating and leading societal transformation processes related to complex sustainability challenges and aspirations towards desirable futures.
The research seeks to understand, develop and evaluate approaches, methods and tools used to navigate transformations in practice, related to fostering systems change and social learning. Areas of interest include backcasting expeditions, society-based laboratories, complex societal systems, education and learning, and transformative leadership including inner capabilities, reflexivity and ethics.
The fields of sustainability transformation research is growing internationally. A backcasting methodology is central in the group’s work on sustainability transformations. It has been developed, applied and evaluated during the last 30 years in numerous transformational processes in Sweden and internationally. The group has co-founded Chalmers Initiative for Innovation and Sustainability Transitions that for example hosted the 8th International Sustainability Transitions Conference. The group has developed the Challenge Lab, which was awarded the EAUC/UNEP GUPES Green Gown Award.
The group combines insights from theoretical-conceptual research with intense case- and process-based transdisciplinary research. This also includes reviews, qualitative empirical comparison, and synthesis work to cumulate knowledge into generic qualities, mechanisms and features of sustainability transformation work that can be transferred across contexts.
Senior researchers:
John Holmberg, Johan Holmén
Senior researchers
Key publications:
Holmberg, J., & Robèrt, K.-H. (2000). Backcasting from non-overlapping sustainability principles - a framework for strategic planning. International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology, 7, 291–308.
Holmberg, J., & Larsson, J. (2018). A Sustainability Lighthouse—Supporting Transition Leadership and Conversations on Desirable Futures. Sustainability, 10(11), 3842. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10113842
Holmén, J., Williams, S., & Holmberg, J. (2022). Comparing sustainability transition labs across process, effects and impacts: Insights from Canada and Sweden. Energy Research & Social Science, 89, 102522. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2022.102522
Holmén, J., Adawi, T., & Holmberg, J. (2021). Student-led sustainability transformations: Employing realist evaluation to open the black box of learning in a Challenge Lab curriculum. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 22(1). https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSHE-06-2020-0230
McCrory, G., Holmén, J., Schäpke, N., & Holmberg, J. (2022). Sustainability-oriented labs in transitions: An empirically grounded typology. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 43, 99–117. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2022.03.004
Holmén, J., Saglietti, C., & Holmberg, J. (2026). Exploring How Metaphors of Change Prefigure Futures in Public Policy, Social Movements, and Community Projects. In S. Sareen & S. Juhola (Eds.), Societal Transitions to Sustainability: The Prefigurative Politics of Present Transformation (pp. 429–447). Springer Nature.