Gesa Pflitsch

Høgskulen på Vestlandet | HVL

This article establishes the multilevel perspective (MLP) as one of the main research approaches in transition research to study complex systemic change processes in socio-technical systems at different structural levels. The application of the MLP to the higher education system, especially to conceptualize the transition of universities towards a...

A key challenge in sustainability transitions research is to better understand the huge variety and spatial unevenness of transitions paths. Institutions and institutional change have been identified as critical issues, as regional institutional settings significantly influence the pace and scope of sustainability transitions. However, the complex...

Die Bedeutung der regionalen Ebene in der „großen Transformation“ zur Nachhaltigkeit wird immer wieder hervorgehoben. Dennoch weiß man noch wenig über die Entstehung, Entwicklung und Durchsetzung regionaler Transitionspfade zur Nachhaltigkeit. Insbesondere ist unklar, wie Veränderungen auf der Mikro-Ebene der Akteure langfristig zu Veränderungen in...

The potential of universities to become 'change agents' for sustainability has increasingly been highlighted in the literature. Some largely open questions are how universities get involved in regional sustainability transitions and how that affects their role in these processes. This paper argues that universities need to develop a boundary-spanni...

The number of scientific publications containing the words “sustainability” or “sustainable” has increased tremendously over the last years, but their origins in Germany are not equally distributed in space. The aim of the paper is to find out why sustainability research occurs strongly in some places and not in others. Four potential external infl...

The present paper investigates the role of the located Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the transformation towards sustainability of the city of Linz as well as the region of Upper Austria. We argue that HEIs have the potential to spur a regional transition towards sustainability via the channels of teaching, research and outreach. We furthe...

While there has recently been an increased interest in urban and regional transitions to sustainability, there are little profound insights about the emergence, design and enforcement of regional transition paths to sustainability (RTPS). The latter are characterized by organizational and institutional dynamics that affect multiple regimes and cann...