Research

Below you’ll find links and brief introductions to my academic publications, PhD thesis, and selected opinion pieces exploring systems‑based and relational approaches to sustainability transformations.

Academic publications

Relational visioning and the emerging future: Transforming towards a sustainable local society
Mobilizing local communities to envision desired futures is a key starting point for sustainability transformations. In this paper we discuss our experiences with hosting a multi-stakeholder vision workshop in a Norwegian municipality

Transforming local governance: Using system leverage points to conceptualize sustainability transformations
Despite the global call for sustainability transformations, researchers and practitioners struggle to achieve this goal. One promising avenue is to use concepts from systems theory, particularly system leverage points, to understand and accelerate transformation processes. This paper addresses how public decision-makers and politicians at different levels of local government understand sustainability transformations and the implications of this understanding for their governance.

Biosphere-based sustainability in local governments: Sustainable development goal interactions and indicators for policymaking
In this paper published in Sustainable Development, me and colleagues assesses SDG interactions in a local governmental context. We address how the SDGs promote a biosphere-based sustainability and explore how a set of sustainability indicators are connected to the SDGs and biosphere-based sustainability. Further, we conduct a case study and develop an SDG interaction model.

PhD thesis

Sustainability transformations in Norwegian municipalities: Bridging the knowledge-action gap through relational systems thinking and visioning
In my PhD, I researched sustainability transformations through the lens of the Norwegian municipality, Molde. The thesis concludes that local governments can transform to facilitate local sustainability transformations by implementing practices for relational systems thinking and visioning and presents a three-stage maturation process consisting of interactions, relations and visions for working with this.

Opinion pieces

Opinion piece on sustainability goals (Norwegian)
In this article, I discuss the practices of working towards sustainability goals. I question whether political leaders truly believe that reaching our sustainability goals is possible and what kind of consequences such a belief can cause. Goals are a high leverage point that has the possibility to transform systems, but only if we believe in them and work toward achieving them every single day.

Opinion piece on sustainability understandings (Norwegian)
In this debate paper, published in Kommunal Rapport, a Norwegian newspaper for the municipal sector, I promote “a sustainable sustainability” and debate that the current short term focus on economic benefits comes at the expense of social and ecological sustainability.