Kristiaan Kok

• PhD
• Assistant Professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

This paper seeks to bridge the gap between socio-material and complex adaptive systems approaches in conceptualizing the politics of transformation. Our contribution in particular is a further clarification of the relational nature of power, and the role of non-humans in transitional dynamics of complex adaptive systems. We explore and operationali...

Scholars have argued that transdisciplinary experimentation processes in Labs which include societal stakeholders in research and innovation might help to create meaningful societal impact. At the same time, there is ample room to explore the practice of ‘doing’ Labs in relation to the transformative impacts that Labs aim to create. We present a ca...

What exactly do transition scholars mean by structure? In efforts to articulate the politics of sustainability transitions, scholarship has en masse turned to unraveling and pluralizing the many different manifestations of agency and power in processes of transformative change. While this is valuable, such an agency-centered focus risks de-politici...

Mission-oriented agricultural innovation systems (MAIS) are becoming more prevalent in view of tackling the challenges of agri-food systems transformation. In this perspective, we argue that the politics of MAIS requires more comprehensive and considerable attention in the field, given the contested and deeply normative nature of the direction of i...

While literature on transition intermediation is burgeoning, the implications of a sensitivity to "place" in transition intermediation remain ill understood. In this paper, we empirically explore the dynamics of "place-based transition intermediation", through a case study of the 'Dune farmers' in the Netherlands. The farmers initiated a collaborat...

In response to the need for exploring transformative innovation policy (TIP) implementation dynamics across sectors and contexts, this paper examines the emergence of TIP in the Chilean agri-food sector. Our findings indicate that TIP has been developing in recent years, primarily in high-level policy discourses, while implementation efforts and th...

Urgent calls for food system transformation have spurred a variety of responses globally. In some cases, these calls have been answered through top-down led processes, driven by public agencies to design and implement measures that can drive societies towards more viable patterns of development. In other cases, transformation processes have been ig...

A just food system transformation is imperative to meet this century’s goals of environmental sustainability, economic fairness, and equitable social well-being. While considerations of justice are beginning to inform food system transformation debates, there remains a lack of conceptual and practical integration of these two historically separate...

CONTEXT Within agricultural systems design, there is increasing focus on transformative change, moving beyond productivity as the sole aim and towards systems that are beneficial for both society and nature. With this trend, it has become common in agricultural systems design approaches to include non-economically driven objectives, such as animal...

While transdisciplinary knowledge production is increasingly gaining traction in academic and policy environments, initiating and guiding such approaches is not straightforward and comes with challenges. These challenges concern, among other things, methodological and practical difficulties that arise in the ‘fuzzy reality’ of doing transdisciplina...

While the potential of transdisciplinary approaches to stimulate transformation and face society’s grand challenges has been the subject of much debate, a crucial question deserves attention: How plannable are these processes, really? In this chapter, we focus on our work in two agri-food system projects. We explore how considerations relating to f...

Creating impact in labs oriented at sustainability transformations is challenging. Combining the experiences of ten projects and sharing the insights in “Labbing”, gained through engaging in various activities within transformation-oriented Labs from the fields of agriculture, food, and healthcare, the author team established a Community of Practic...

Scholars have stressed the need to better understand the role of learning in sustainability transitions. Even though progress has been made, there is a call for more research, both in the form of large-scale empirical studies and theoretical clarity. Based on pragmatic learning theory, this paper responds to this call by presenting the results of a...

In this paper, we explore the relation between democracy and justice in governing agri-food transitions. We argue that a deeper understanding of democracy is needed to foster just transitions. First, we present a multi-dimensional understanding of justice in transitions and relate it to scholarship on democratizing transitions. Then, we argue that...

Transition experiments are important instruments to foster sustainability transitions. Transition scholars increasingly suggest investigating how multiple local experiments can become connected across spatial scales, and how transformative dynamics of multiple connected experiments can be facilitated and governed. In this paper we analyze the diffe...

Dominant agricultural and food systems lead to continuous resource depletion and unacceptable environmental and social impacts. While current calls for changing agrifood systems are increasingly framed in the context of sustainability transitions, they rarely make an explicit link to transition studies to address these systemic challenges, nor do t...

Transdisciplinary research and innovation (R&I) efforts have emerged as a means to address challenges to sustainable transformation. One of the main elements of transdisciplinary efforts is the ‘inclusion’ of different stakeholders, values and perspectives in participatory R&I processes. In practice, however, ‘doing inclusion’ raises a number of ch...

Food systems are not fit for purpose, transgressing planetary boundaries, causing unhealthy consumption patterns and are rife with inequality. Research and Innovation (R&I) are central to tackling these food systems challenges, yet R&I systems are equally not fit for purpose, often lacking systemic and participatory approaches to food systems trans...

This final policy brief of the European Union (EU) Think Tank – part of the FIT4FOOD2030 Coordination and Support Action (CSA) of the FOOD 2030 initiative – aims to highlight key principles for commissioning impactful, inter- and transdisciplinary Research and Innovation (R&I) in support of the FOOD 2030 agenda.

Background Food systems are associated with severe and persistent problems worldwide. Governance approaches aiming to foster sustainable transformation of food systems face several challenges due to the complex nature of food systems. Scope and approach In this commentary we argue that addressing these governance challenges requires the developmen...

The EU Think Tank (as part of the FIT4FOOD2030 Coordination and Support Action) strongly supports the development of the Farm to Fork Strategy as a key component of the European Green Deal, recognising the need to transform the food system as a whole. This policy brief calls for innovative approaches to the Farm to Fork Strategy to provide practica...

Current research and innovation (R&I) systems are not equipped to fully serve as catalysts for the urgently needed transformation of food systems. Though research on food systems transformation (first order: ‘what?’) and transformative research (second order: ‘how to’) are rapidly gaining traction in academic and policy environments, current effort...

Recent two-dimensional computer simulations and experiments indicate that even supercooled liquids exhibit long-lived, long-range strain correlations expected only in solids. Here we investigate this issue in three dimensions via Newtonian molecular-dynamics simulations, by a generalized hydrodynamics approach, and by experiments on Brownian hard-s...

We present a quantitative study of strain correlations in quiescent supercooled liquids and glasses. Recent two-dimensional computer simulations and experiments indicate that even supercooled liquids exhibit long-lived, long-range strain correlations. Here we investigate this issue in three dimensions via experiments on hard sphere colloids and mol...