LUCSUS Seminar: Promoting transformational sustainable change: experiences and reflections from the Scanian craft beer sector

Numerous approaches to promote bottom-up, collaborative sustainable change have emerged in recent years. An example is urban living labs where researchers work in conjunction with different organizations and individuals in society to devise and test measures to promote sustainability. Although living labs, and other similar approaches, have experienced rapid development in sustainability science, still little is understood about many aspects of the collaborative process. These include, for example, how researchers can, or should, interact with societal actors to effectively promote more sustainable change, how to deal with competing objectives among lab participants, and if or how the measures can be duplicated or scaled.

Linking the global with the local, this presentation focuses on one urban living lab called SustBeerLab, a lab consisting of a number of interactive activities to promote sustainability in the craft beverage industry. During the seminar, Darin & Barry will provide a succinct overview of the lab, and recent updates on the main sustainability initiatives we are working on with the industry (i.e., principles, hydroponic hop growing, capacity building), including a new 3-minute film on the hop growing. We then will present (and hopefully have a discussion on) a number of key points and recommendations when closely working with actors from the private sector to increase sustainability in their operations. This will include a focus on organizational, inter-personal, and intra-personal levels.

Bios

Barry Ness is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Sustainability Studies (LUCSUS). His research concentrates on understanding bottom-up processes of sustainable change, with a current focus on small- & medium-sized enterprises. Barry is a work package co-leader for the TRANSFORM Project, and was a work package leader and researcher for the GLOCULL Project. He was also the Skåne Local Interaction Platform director and researcher for the Mistra Urban Futures Project (2017-2020).

Darin Wahl is a PhD Candidate at the Centre for Sustainability Studies (LUCSUS). His research centers on understanding sustainability solution oriented transdisciplinary processes. Darin’s thesis work looks at the functioning of urban living labs individually and coordinated in international consortia through the GLOCULL and TRANSFORM projects.

The seminar is a part of the theme: Connecting the Local and the Global.

Registration

To join the seminar online please sign up here. You will then receive a confirmation email with a Zoom-link to the seminar.

The LUCSUS seminars are open for the public, held online or in-person and take place Thursdays from 11am to 12 noon. We are looking forwards to seeing you!