My research seeks to understand the dynamics of socio-technical transitions and how they affect people and communities from a justice perspective. I approach this topic with novel interdisciplinary approaches, striving to valorise my research for policy and societal impact. My work has advanced the scientific understanding of how complex socio-technical processes create and shape (spatial) inequalities in the contexts of energy transition and climate action. With a critical spatial lens, I also engage with questions of participatory planning and citizen engagement, including “real-world” tensions between pragmatic and democratic approaches to public participation and the importance of politicising urban planning through a relational understanding of space. This research has informed policy at the Dutch and European levels.
Increasingly interested in the power of collective action, I build on my recent research and take an ontological-material turn to further conceptualise and develop new critical research on the transformative potential of alternative climate imaginaries. Answering a pressing call in planning literature for understanding the situated and material conditions through which climate imaginaries are (re)produced, I take a critical spatial approach to reveal the conflicts between fundamental assumptions shaping worldviews, the challenges of enacting transformative change through prefigurative practices, and the complex and contested power dynamics of climate imaginaries.
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Juliana Gonçalves 