We all depend on societal infrastructure – water from the tap, electricity in the socket, mobile payments, the bus to work, rubbish collected every week. Yet despite challenges such as climate change, geopolitical uncertainty, and rapid urbanisation placing ever greater demands on these sectors, they change remarkably slowly. Solutions also look broadly similar the world over, despite places having vastly different physical, institutional, and economic preconditions.
My research is driven by questions about what gives rise to this pattern and what it takes to renew systems we all fundamentally depend on. I study innovation-driven transitions in societal infrastructure at multiple levels: how firms and public actors develop, commercialise, or implement new solutions; how global templates for infrastructure solutions emerge and are implemented across places with very different preconditions; and what it takes for cities and regions to deviate from the status quo. With a particular focus on the geography of sustainability transitions, I study how places shape different conditions for new infrastructure solutions to emerge – and how these solutions diffuse between cities, regions and countries.
Interests: I like being outdoors: cycling, hiking, travelling, swimming, running – in the park, by the sea, in the mountains, on the Scanian plain.
Other: Has won the Danish elite league in backgammon together with Malmö BgK, and also represented the Swiss backgammon national team at the World Championship in Trier 2021.
The legitimacy of the academy is not given. It must be earned and defended, and right now we find ourselves in an unusually challenging situation. Distrust of research and expertise is growing, social media is changing how knowledge is disseminated and interpreted, AI challenges fundamental assumptions about what scientific production entails, and the publication system is undergoing structural changes that risk undermining peer review.
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