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Abstract

Researchers often seek to enable sustainability transitions by helping new technologies or practices influence and change society in deep and transformative ways. There are inherent tensions in these ambitions, but they remain underexplored in the literature and practical experiences of our encounters with these tensions are similarly underdiscussed. This paper shares reflections and insights from a transdisciplinary project in Australia which explored how a more deliberate and critically reflexive approach to research could be pursued to enable a transition toward an algal bioeconomy. Presenting the project as a case study, we highlight how issues of place, materiality, aesthetics, and history can influence the role of research in socio-technical transitions in subtle and often unacknowledged ways. In the context of a nascent and contested bioeconomic vision for Australia, we contend that there is a need for researchers to challenge themselves with speculative, normative and plausible transition design projects, to build our collective capacity for deliberate and critical engagement in the futures that we pursue, or participate in, through our work. Specific practices that might help are raised and enabling conditions, such as a gap in the structure of Australia’s National Innovation System, are addressed in the discussion. In the face of these needs, challenges and opportunities, we conclude that a ‘systems weaver’ modality can offer clarity, agency and understanding to researchers and practitioners about the potential of their work and their role in systems change.

Keywords

transition design sustainability transitions circular economy bioeconomy algae bioplastics innovation system research impact sustainable design

Introduction

Research seeking to support green technologies, system change, and/or sustainability transitions are often tied up with whatever the people doing it, or enabling it, envision as a better future. The articulation of those futures, what makes them better, and why that might (or might not) be the case is often inexplicit and vague. As a result, a variety of agendas, preferences, and aspirations often sit undiscussed yet highly influential on the way research engages with the pursuit of systems change and sustainability transitions.

A key example of these tensions can be seen in the competing and contradicting assemblage of visions, politics, and priorities that have been mobilised under narratives which promote transitions toward a bioeconomy and/or a circular economy. These concepts, as will be discussed, have multiple interpretations and have attracted a significant body of research, policy, and public interest over recent decades, even if the transition is yet to arrive. Experience of these efforts has afforded researchers and practitioners the opportunity for reflection. A critical discussion has alleged that the original visions carried by bioeconomic and circular concepts have been co-opted, and increased attention is being placed on the politics of sustainability, with a more critical role for researchers demanded in how they participate in change. Some of these responses have focused on calls to change how bioeconomic transitions research is conducted (Eversberg 2023a; Giampietro 2023), however the critiques mirror a broader shift in sustainability science and transitions research. The need for research (ers) to more openly surface the uncertainties that are inherent to working with complex systems and to deliberately engage and empower more reflexive and diverse forms of knowledge when pursuing social change has now become a commonly diagnosed issue (e.g., Caniglia et al. 2021; Fazey et al. 2020; Wyborn et al. 2020). Ultimately there is an emerging trend; to take what Schot and Kanger (2018) described as the need for “Deep Transitions” in society and first look inward, asking if research (ers) require greater capacities for critical and reflexive awareness in how they approach their pursuit of change.

Practical case studies and reflexive contributions that surface experiences with these tensions are an obvious source of knowledge that can help to answer and enact these changes; however, such work remains under-represented in the literature and is outweighed by a tendency to focus on abstract and conceptual discussions of change.

To help address these gaps, this paper presents findings from a research project as a case study to discuss the role of research and researchers in the pursuit of sustainability transitions. As will be described in further detail through this paper, the research project involved a transdisciplinary group of scholars from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) undertaking a systems scoping study. The scoping study’s aim was to inform how future UTS research programs on algae-based bioplastic technologies might be tailored to maximise their socio-ecological impacts in Australia and enable a normative and sustainable bioeconomy.

This paper explicates the critical learnings from the project in two primary ways. First, it shares experiences from using a transdisciplinary approach to systems scoping and transition design which aimed to pursue ‘normative’ systemic impacts from algae-bioplastics technologies. It addresses what worked, what didn’t, and where there might be valuable lessons. Second, it analyses the implications and opportunities that insights from the research project might hold for transition design more broadly. In this regard, we consider the role of research (ers) in socio-technical transitions and how their contributions can be improved.

By reflecting on the research project, the paper identifies a set of insights about the role of research in society, focused on an example of algae-based biotechnology. We argue that our experiences reflect broader patterns in the way that visions for a “bioeconomy” and “circularity” have been pursued in the past, identifying how the politics of incumbent systems and alternative visions for the future often lie unaddressed, undiscussed, and under-explored in the way transitions are approached and engaged with via research. In response, we argue that there is a need for funding structures and critically reflexive research processes to support researchers to strategically explore their work and the transition pathways that they are engaged in. We outline specific practices that helped us, and may help others, and reflect on what might be valuable for a broad readership of researchers and practitioners engaged in transition design, sustainability transitions and bioeconomic research. Theoretical and thematic background that provides further context for the research is introduced below.

Theoretical and Thematic Background

Transition Design, Futures Studies, and Sustainability Science

The strategic pursuit of systems change is now the focus of a broad and cross-disciplinary body of scholarship and practice. Research contributions about the aims, means and complexities of systems change are shared areas of focus in the fields of futures studies, sustainability science, and transition design. These fields are overlapping and interconnected, both conceptually and by their communities of researchers and practitioners.

A central premise shared by these fields and agendas is that research, and researchers, have important roles to play in the pursuit of sustainable futures. While there are countless differences in the way change is understood, important theoretical lineages have emerged which conceptualise sustainability transition and transformations in ways that place different priorities for action. This includes an emphasis on (i) the role that technology plays in society (Geels 2002; Geels and Schot 2007), (ii) the socio-cultural and social-ecological context that shapes humanity’s relationship to the natural world, (Gunderson and Holling 2002; Ives et al. 2017; Waddell et al. 2015), or (iii) in the role of interior values, inner development and worldviews that shapes our thinking (Ives et al., 2020; O’Brien and Sygna 2013; Riedy 2016).

Transition design “takes as its central premise the need for societal transitions to more sustainable futures” (Irwin et al. 2022, 67). Emerging from educational curricula to extend the role of design in these transitions, transition design has since developed into a broad body of transdisciplinary work, ideas, and action (Irwin 2015, 2018; Irwin et al. 2022). Central aspects of this work are captured by the Transition Design Framework (TDF), which identifies four “mutually reinforcing and co-evolving areas of knowledge, action and self-reflection”: Visions for Transition; Theories of Change; Posture & Mindset; and New Ways of Designing (Irwin 2018). This framework positions transition design scholarship as a capacious endeavour which fluidly adopts, adapts and builds upon theories and concepts from various disciplines. In academia and in practice, TDF holds relevance and overlaps with a plethora of concepts and insights from socio-technical systems studies, socio-economic theory, social-ecological systems research, innovation studies, and sustainability practice writ large. In its engagement with Visions for Transition, for example, TDF has clear points of engagement with the field of futures studies, “the systematic study of possible, probable and preferrable futures” (Inayatullah 2013, 37) and in its exploration of Theories of Change, the TDF overlaps with the broad field of sustainability science, which is itself an interdisciplinary exploration of systems-oriented approaches to pursuing sustainable futures and change at different scales (Fazey et al. 2020; van der Hel 2018; Wyborn et al. 2020).

Amidst this constellation of concepts and theories, this research project used an approach that drew on ideas discussed under each of area of the TDF. The systems scoping study was informed using desktop research and interviews with stakeholders in the algae-tech sector, reviewing history and system dynamics by engaging with potential industry partners and government stakeholders, and ongoing discussions with colleagues undertaking design-led materials research into algae bioplastics. Collectively, the work enabled the identification of a set of different scenarios, and acknowledgement of the pros, cons, preconditions and tensions of different pathways that the university might take.

Despite overlaps with the TDF, there are some clear differences in our context and approach. First, transition design is often discussed as an approach suited to very broad, wicked problems, necessitating a bottom-up and place-based process of engaging with stakeholders about the future (Irwin 2015, 2018). Our context started with a more abstract but specific goal; to develop a future research program and design hub for algae-based bioplastics (hereafter a ‘design hub’) that might create normative opportunities and impacts for Australian ecology and society. As is commonly the case, we responded to this context by drawing on specific practices that are referenced within the TDF, many of which are held in common within futures studies. As a result, the work could equally be described as using Loorbach (2009)’s four dimensions of Transition Management, which calls for acts of strategy (mapping a system and identifying a vision), tactics (developing coalitions and agendas), operation (implementing experiments), and reflexivity (including monitoring and learning).

The research team included scholars with backgrounds in design, social science and the natural sciences. During team discussions and informal reflections, it became clear that there was value from more deeply exploring and discussing the non-technical findings and insights experienced and produced. The lead author volunteered to lead a reflexive process that fulfilled this task and culminated in this paper. We identified that the themes and challenges encountered present a microcosm of important topics and dynamics that are being discussed conceptually in the literature about how research might support systems change and sustainability transitions. These connections will be discussed in Section 4 of the paper. They include considerations about the role of place in innovation (Fløysand et al. 2021; Irwin 2018), systemic influences on the directionality of research and socio-technical change (Schot and Kanger 2018; Simoens et al. 2022), and the politics of identifying normative futures and pursuing them in and through research contexts (van der Hel 2018).

Bioeconomic Discourse and the Pursuit of Algae-Related Innovation as a Socio-Technical Panacea

As stated above, this paper will discuss a research project that engaged concepts of the bioeconomy, circular economy and visions for algal biotechnologies in relation to sustainable futures. To adequately equip the reader, a brief account of these terms is required to contextualise their connotations and histories.

The politics, visions and agendas which are mobilised in calls for circular economies (D’Amato 2021) and bioeconomic change (Bugge et al. 2016; Eversberg et al. 2023a) are a telling example of what Simoens et al. (2022) termed ‘discursive co-optation’. In both cases, the terms originally painted visions for a sustainable future that entailed deep and widespread transformation in society’s values and economic systems. Over time, popular calls for circular- and bio-economies have gradually become a reformist narrative about technological substitution that resists, rather than supports, those original visions and diagnoses. Georgescu-Roegen’s (1971) concept of the ‘bioeconomy’, for example, was originally presented as a vision for a radically alternative economic system– one that emphasised biophysical constraints and challenged the very notion economic growth. Today, dominant academic and policy discourse about the bioeconomy is widely seen as enabling (and justifying) the politics of economic growth (Eversberg et al. 2023; Vogelpohl 2023; Bugge et al. 2016; D’Amato 2021; Leipold et al. 2023). This is reflected, for example, in Wreford et al.’s (2019, 185) characterisation of “three harmonising elements” in how the bioeconomy is now narrated: “the sustainable use of natural (biomass) resource and a reduction in waste and pollutants; coupled with a transitioning away from dependence on fossil fuel resources; to achieve economic and social growth, and employment”. This narrative shift has been much critiqued, with contemporary bioeconomic discourse, criticised as offering “an economy of promises” that are extractive (Anlauf 2023), neoliberal (Vogelpohl 2023) and misleadingly simplistic in the roles green technologies might play to help humanity deal with the scale of sustainability crisis. Eversberg et al.’s (2023) special feature edition of Sustainability Science argued, for example, that dominant narratives about the bioeconomy present technological solutions as a way to avoid deeper socio-cultural change which sit at the root causes of (un)sustainability.

The emerging algal-based bioplastics industry has been a particular ‘niche’ of interest, with various hopes attached to its potential to support a transition toward circular- and bio-based economies. Sources for this optimism span both poles of bioeconomic narratives that are highlighted above. A reformist vision tends to promote the opportunities for algae-based products through visions for high-volume industrial production systems that can enable ‘drop in’ technological substitution by using industrial production of algae to create fuels, cattle feed, and bioplastics. This has tended to dominate the imagination of researchers and created opportunities for industry-focused research and innovation (CSIRO 2017; Kelly 2020). A more radical and less industrially focused perspective is one that envisages algae futures in more naturalistic environs– often using the imagery of macro algae (seaweed) in place of micro-algae, and draws forth ideas of small-scale ocean farming of diverse algal species in order to support a more agrarian vision of localised, circular, bio-based economies. The Safe Seaweed Coalition¹ (2020, 1, 5), for example, developed a “Manifesto for a Sustainable Future” which describes a holistic, risk-conscious and socio-ecological ambition in its vision, calling for “an upscaled, responsible and restorative seaweed industry playing a significant role in achieving the Global Goals by contribution to food safety and security, climate change mitigation, poverty alleviation and support to marine ecosystems”. Visions of this future hold similar politics and aesthetics to more specific visions promoted by Bren Smith (2019) and Greenwave (2022) who call for an expansion of small-scale multi-species aquaculture systems and an avoidance of large-scale industrial futures.

Reflecting the balance of power between these visions, the most salient socio-technical pathway attracting research and innovation in algae-based technologies has focused on its potential as one of several biogenic feedstock alternatives to fossil fuels. Despite much hope and attention, algae-based biofuels failed to take off and the opportunities have offered limited environmental benefits (Onen Cinar et al. 2020), raising questions about alternative opportunities for algae-related research and innovation (Araújo et al. 2021; Biello 2011; Wydra et al. 2021). Responding to cost issues that restricted commercial competitiveness in fuels, prospects for algae production have now shifted to higher-value, lower volume products, such as pharmaceuticals, food, cosmetics and bioplastics (Berry et al. 2022; Filote et al. 2021; Hoegh-Guldberg and Northrop 2023). Bioplastics have emerged as one of the most significant options, as a potential material in packaging, casings, and additive manufacturing, and algae-based bioplastics are now the focus of much attention in Australia’s nascent algae industry (Berry et al. 2022; Kelly 2020; Ralph and Pernice 2023) and has sparked the interest of product designers worldwide (Camere and Karana 2018).

This brief introduction demonstrates that there are multiple competing visions for what sustainable futures look like. Various visions are mobilised by discussions of circular and bioeconomies and these are present in the way algae-based technologies have been researched to date. In our project, and this paper, this understanding lets us start with a position that there is value in critically analysing and exploring how research might engage with different futures that algae-based bioplastics might enable. Section 2 will establish the data, methodology and limitations that contextualise the paper and its arguments. A summary of the case study is then presented in Section 3, outlining how we approached the work and what we learned through reflexive analysis. Section 4 then extends the discussion and implications of these findings and insights in relation to the literature on transition design, exploring the role of research (ers) in relation to systems change. The paper concludes by identifying concrete ways that we suggest can help research, and researchers, to become more capable and responsible agents in society’s sustainability transitions.

Methodology, Data and Limitations

Our research group has produced strategic and technical insights about the development of algae-based bioplastics in Australia that have been outlined in publications elsewhere (Lee et al. 2021, 2024; Scardifield et al. 2023). This paper complements those outputs. It captures the insights generated from developing a systems scoping study and the findings contribute to research and practitioners in transition design and related fields.

The findings presented in this paper draw on two sources of data. First, it includes insights generated from a reflexive review process. This process generated reflections from lead author’s individual perspective, which were then raised in a series of discussions with the broader research team. Co-authors of this paper were part of those discussions and helped to further validate and synthesise the outcomes through the process of writing of this paper. To reflect the basis of its claims, reflexive findings will be written from the perspective of the lead author, where relevant, to make the source knowledge clear to readers.

Second, the paper includes findings from interviews that were undertaken during the research project (the systems scoping study). These included semi-structured interviews undertaken with leading Australian researchers studying algae-based technologies, government stakeholders with experience in algae-based technology and innovation, and industry stakeholders who were engaged to explore potential research partnerships. Insights from these interviews were generated through the use of reflexive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006, 2019). This process involved a first cycle of coding of interview transcriptions using in vivo and descriptive techniques (Saldaña 2021). Themes were then explored by reviewing insights across those codes, across interviews, and were iteratively refined through the reflexive discussions as a team, and in process of writing.

The research was undertaken in accordance with ethics approval from the University of Technology Sydney for both the interviews undertaken during the project scoping study (HREC number: ETH21-6245) and for the reflexive discussions amongst the UTS team (HREC number: ETH22-7569). Written and/or verbal consent was obtained from all interview participants.

Like all research, this paper contains epistemological assumptions and limitations. Propositions identified in this paper are qualitative and will benefit from further testing and exploration in other contexts and via other research methods.

Case Study Review: What Worked, What didn’t, and Insights that Were Generated

The research project that we present as a case study emerged through an ambition to find how our university, and our research team, might produce a future research program that could support deliberate and strategic ways for algae-based bioplastics technologies to make their way into Australia’s society and economy. While specific considerations emerged during the process, broad aspirations guided what the algae-based research program and design hub might deliver. This included an aspiration to create a design cooperative, a goal to maximise social and ecological benefits, and an aim to connect our research program to the development of an algae-based bioplastic industry that might support a broader socio-technical transition towards a circular bioeconomy. These aspirations are broad and require further unpacking.

The vignette below provides a narrative summary of the research process. It aims to afford the reader with a sense of how we approached the process of designing a future program of algae bioplastics research, and the different points of clarity, uncertainty, and ideation that developed along the way. It describes an applied approach to systems analysis that draws on various ideas in transition design theory and is written in first person, reflecting perspectives of the lead author.

The goal for the systems scoping project was initially framed as exploring the opportunity for an algae-based bioplastics material research/product design cooperative, hosted by UTS. When the lead author of this paper joined the team to help undertake this task, there were already a range of goals, concepts and assumptions that appeared to exist within the group but which where yet to be surfaced for discussion- which types and sources of algae are we using and why? What is the intent of making a ‘design cooperative’ and why is it being considered? What products can/might we aspire to create, for whom, and why? Where might a future design hub be situated, and why? In the context of algae-based bioplastics and concerns with circularity, the scoping project started with broad remit to explore an initiative that engaged with topics of algal biomass production, material design, cooperative business models, and had an aim that saw algae-based bioplastic technologies create maximal social and ecological benefits.

The scoping team undertook a systems analysis process to identify potential project opportunities and initiate their development. We drew on the above considerations and concepts from futures and systems transitions literature and presented these explorations by documenting soft-systems analysis (Figure 1

Figure 1.

Indicative topics discussed when scoping the systemic context and potential interconnections for the design of an bioplastics research program and design hub.

) which provided further discussion and ideation of potential focal points and opportunities that different people in the team knew about from their networks, experience, and disciplinary perspectives.

The process we used was iterative. We reviewed trends in algae-related technologies, including visions and hopes for this sector as well as experiences from established researchers in this field. We also explored trends in manufacturing that might influence the potential futures for an algae-based bioplastic industry. During the process, our exploration and discussion of technological, economic and socio-ecological factors for different algae production models made it clear that our site should focus on regional New South Wales and explore opportunities that connected to a supply chain of algae grown in open-air ponds, given cost and economics of current production systems. In particular, we identified opportunities to explore a potential linkage with research trends using macro algae for low-cost biological wastewater treatment, addressing the goal of an intervention that supported material circularity and enabling a feedstock for bioplastics that might be a by-product of process that was in itself beneficial in terms of circularity objectives.

The constraints of regional and decentralised production systems drew us progressively further into what a potential design hub might look like and do (Figure 2

Figure 2.

Indicative considerations that emerged during the discussions about normative impacts.

). This included meeting potential partners in agriculture to discuss how our project might be designed to align with trends in additive manufacturing, using de-centralised/distributed models that can support regional development, and enable more resilient material supply chains in response to the impacts of COVID-19.

Situating our focus on regional Australia and wastewater treatment, in turn, brought agriculture to the fore and specificity to how we might consider and identify our potential partners, including identifying specific sites and sectors that might benefit from algae production, bioplastic products, and have an appetite for a research partnership. It also helped narrow, and reconsider how the project might support cooperative business models. Here, we drew on research that concurrently been developed by colleagues at our university who had been exploring the nexus of cooperatives and their underrepresentation in innovation and R&D (Josserand 2020). Partner selection thus became another consideration in how a project thematically focused on technological development and innovation might also create co-benefits for cooperatives and mutuals in Australia (Figure 3

Figure 3.

Artefact used to support discussion of potential design considerations, including partner selection.

During the process of the work, some key moments made me notice shifts in my own understanding of the work and the potential for the research to enact change. First, I reaslised that I came into the project with a strong enthusiasm for seaweed (macro algae), carrying visions and imaginaries of all it might do, from reinvigorating coastal communities to regenerating marine ecology. With limited exposure to algae-derived bioplastics, I thought about things like small-scale coastal production systems that could be linked with place-based seafood, putting a dent in climate change and restoring coastal ecologies through a network of nuanced micro initiatives. The dominant aesthetics and visions for algae-derived biotech that the scoping study led us to via interviews and desktop research, however, focused on micro-algae grown in onshore High-Rate Algae Ponds (HRAPs). This carried different, very industrial, aesthetics and imaginaries of what an algae-driven futures entailed- and the differences gave me pause –they clashed the social and ecological futures that I was attracted to. Later in the project, these concerns were again raised and reviewed. The consequence of different scales of algae production became more tangible, and attractive, by considering smaller, decentralized algae farming, and farming on existing ponds. A second point of insight came in relation to the way different team members understood seemingly innocuous terms and concepts. I read “coop” on the brief and thought of large–scale, industrial, farmer-owned manufacturers - like meat works and dairy processing. These are the types of cooperatives that I grew up with in regional Australia. However, one project meeting left me wondering what the broader team had envisaged in their aspirations for a coop and its link to design– was I supposed to be taking inspiration from the small wholefoods store near my house in Sydney? The implications of these visions, and aspirations to link bioplastics to a cooperative sat at polar opposites to my immediate interpretation. Instead of industrial designer working on bits and bobs for factories and industry, I wondered if the project was seeking to create high-end designer nick-nacks sold to be sold at a university-sponsored art store.

Finally, I found exploring ‘where’ our feedstock algae might come from, and how it would create circular economies dramatically influenced my imagination for the technology and its role. Different places carried connotations and frames about which kinds of bioplastics we might make, what the design coop might mean, and what our impact/role is. Initial discussions framed the opportunity as growing algae in vats under high-rises in the inner city near UTS. As the project progressed, we shifted towards the use of HRAPS, and this narrowed the site to regional NSW, and to potential sites and partners; algae production might best be done where it also addresses wastewater treatment, and bioplastic products might be most needed in areas where they can replace existing options. Identifying pathways for production and product use gave clearer inspiration for potential partners; the scale started to become clear and looking at precedents made things tangible.

The narrative above recounts what was learned and experienced from the viewpoint of the lead author. Group discussions and reflections on the project enabled a more nuanced and insightful set of lessons to be deduced. These themes will be discussed in Section 4, and highlight the complex role that preconceived ideas, visions, conceptual understandings and aspirations appeared to have during different stages of the project. Here, individuals’ histories, politics, and experiences were often latent but highly influential to the work, shaping the research goals, and potentially, its outcomes.

Insights and Implications for Transition Design and Systems Change

The reflections above have direct relevance to important questions and debates in transition design, futures, and sustainability literature. To surface these relationships, this section is framed around three interrelated tensions that arose in the process of the systems scoping research project. The insights raised were generated through reflexive debriefs and discussions between the lead author and the project team, which includes the co-authors of this paper.

Imagining Through the Process: Aesthetics, Place, and Precedent are Latent and Subconscious Factors that (re)frame Our Visions and Aspirations

There are numerous links between what we described in our case study to concerns that have been raised by others pursuing transdisciplinary research for sustainable futures. First, it was clear that different understandings of terms and concepts created boundary objects (Star and Griesemer 1989) that influenced the possibilities at hand. In our research project, aspirations for the future research program and design hub to engage with ‘a cooperative’ and deliver ‘environmental benefit’ as outcomes masked a variety of different meanings and associations amongst the researchers in the team. The variety of meanings held by these terms, and the deliberative value that those (mis)understandings eventually enabled, are reflective of the role that boundary objects play in deliberations about the future. Our project team found that identifying the plurality of perspectives about what inconspicuous terms meant, the values they carried, and whether they were normative or otherwise for society, created a forum for individual and collective reflexivity. Leventon et al. (2021) have highlighted this potential, suggesting that boundary concepts can facilitate “dancing with systems by encouraging us to embrace uncertainty, listen to what the system tells us, stay as a learner of the system, and question our role in the system”. This approach, they suggest, reflects how a leverage points approach to systems change is best approached by researchers and practitioners. Notably, their description of a ‘leverage points’ approach moves away from an outward focus on changing the worldviews of others toward a more inward and reflexive considerations about one’s role in the system and whose sustainable future is being envisaged and pursued.

The emotional appeal of different futures is also well recognised in the literature. Various practitioners and scholars exploring participatory futures and transition design have found that creating compelling narratives and visions of the future are important skills and outcomes. While our project found efficacy in the careful selection of images that served as discursive objects in the process of envisaging, there are opportunities to take this further, inviting the use of fiction and experiential futures (e.g., Garduño and Gaziulusoy 2021). Throughout progressive stages of our research project, we found even the use of images to be a double-edged sword; it was relatively easy to find images that might exaggerate a potential future toward either utopian or dystopian ends, however it was more valuable, and more difficult, to find ways to visualise tangible pathways and alternatives. The most compelling insights emerged from tangible examples of actions and experiments that were currently happening in practice. This reflects the concept that “pockets of the future” are embedded in the present–a principle of futures scanning and a fundamental part of frameworks and tools like Sharpe et al.’s (2016) Three Horizons Framework that has become widely used by practitioners to explore various dynamics of futures, complex systems, and transitions.

The influence of aesthetics on the futures that we imagined was also ‘felt’ or experienced first-hand when (then abstract) ideas from the systems analysis team were juxtaposed with visuals and aesthetics of the materials being developed in the design-led material science part of the project (Figure 4).²

Figure 4.

Photos of findings and exploration by the design-led materials research part of the project, introduced to the scoping team mid-way through the process. Photos by Ella Williams.

In our research project, our scoping team found value in aesthetically, narratively, and conceptually “grounding” discussions about systems interventions and pathways to sustainable futures into the specifics of materials and places. Doing so made the opportunities and potential for our research project to act as a meaningful intervention in society feel more convincing and realistic. When discussing potential options for future research program and design hub with potential partners, we could sense a similar grasp of clarity emerge about the possibilities they imagined.

Contextualising the work in specific places was interconnected with these questions of aesthetics and conceptual aspects of the research project. In our research project, the place (i.e. siting) for a future research program and design hub generated nuanced reflections and productive constraints. It helped a sharper strategy to be formed about the types of products, partners and research that we might feasibly pursue. In a broad context wherein sustainability and policy discourse are often skewed toward global agendas and impacts measured through (economic) abstractions, geographically contextualising where research impacts might happen afforded valuable nuance to our discussions about the opportunities, risks and priorities from algae-based technology and the role research. Here, goals for the sequestration of carbon could be weighed against social and ecological conditions that we might participate in and enable in the context of regional towns, manufacturing and industrial systems specific to different types of agriculture. This mirrored, in tangible ways, discussions that have been raised elsewhere that seek to nuance how science and industry might pursue the hopes and opportunities for algal technologies. This includes how algae might be farmed to combat climate change in ways that avoid industrial models and consider potential risks impacts to local ecologies and landscapes (Campbell et al. 2019; Hoegh-Guldberg and Northrop 2023; Safe Seaweed Coalition 2020). Grounding discussions in specific regions also enabled deliberations about potential links to trends like additive manufacturing (Achurch 2019; Beckmann et al. 2016; Okwudire and Madhyastha 2021) to become more tangible, providing a specificity to previously abstract discussions about the potential impacts of different industrial systems and how they might be envisioned in the context of regional Australia and the state of New South Wales (NSW).

A return toward place-specific dimensions of sustainability is a broad and emerging theme in sustainability literature (Wearne et al. 2023; Wearne and Riedy 2024) and is a central priority of transition design. Irwin et al. (2022), for example, outlined that transition design was partially conceived in response to a tendency for preceding scholarship on transitions to produce abstract and displaced approaches which lacked visibility on the materiality of place-specific contexts. The TDF (Irwin 2018), and its subsequent discussion (Irwin et al. 2022) has emphasised a focus on the domains of everyday life as a way to complement and address this shortfall.³

The productivity of a place-specific focus in research that pursues technological innovation has also been raised in other sectors. Fløysand et al. (2021) for example raise this dynamic in relation to Tasmanian salmon farming. They argued that a focus on place supports and enables responsible research and innovation, and suggest centering regional contexts and stakeholders can produce more nuanced and directionally normative outcomes for society.

Amidst this enthusiasm, there are different ways that place has been considered in how change is pursued, from patterns of “top-down” localisation through to “bottom-up” processes of emergence (Wearne and Riedy 2024). While the momentum in much of the literature tends to favour emergence and local participation (Bennett et al. 2021; Fazey et al. 2020; Irwin 2018; Wearne 2023; Wearne and Riedy 2024) our project identified a messier approach to this dynamic, demonstrating how productive ideas for place-based change may emerge from abstract and external concept development alongside iterations that test these potentials in specific contexts.

The discussion above shows how contextual specificity helped to surface alternative futures and pathways, make them tangible enough to consider if and how they might be realised, and enhanced our ability to assess normativity of our work as researchers. A key lesson we gained was that the process of contextualisation can be messy. It takes time to see which ideas and terms are acting (unrecognised) as boundary objects (Leventon et al. 2021; Star & Griesemer 1989) and it requires skill and judgement amongst the team to see the value of diverse perspectives, hold space for discussions about those different agendas, and find a pathway through.

Chance, Choice, and Incumbent Systems: Questioning Preconceptions and Drivers on the Direction and Role of Research

Table 1 outlines insights that were shared during interviews we undertook with the broader research team and other experts as part of our systems scoping research. This identified that research exploring algae-related innovations in wastewater, biofuels and other products has tended to follow trends: key projects and papers influenced the direction of research and funding, which in turn have had consequences for broader systems and pathways for change.

Table 1.

Key Themes and Excerpts From Interviews With Established Researchers in the Development of Algal Technologies.

Thematic Summary	Example Narrative (quote)
“Failure is a part progress but “what’s working” is often more attractive.”	“The first round of [algae-tech] research focused on microalgae. Through it, we learned to “give up” on species selection – and so the micro algae species used in wastewater treatment and product creation are generally weed-like species– they’re the ones that end up growing naturally.”
“Biofuels? Just don’t go there; it nearly killed the [algal research] industry”.	“In the 1970s and 1980s, there was an exploration of filamentous algae- but these initial efforts were not successful and so the industry moved away. Biofuels was the rage for decades, and it fits most naturally with micro algae due to their biochemical composition. Algal-based biofuels faced challenges and those challenges put strains on algal research more broadly.”

Table 2 shares further insights from those interviews, highlighting specific examples and experiences interviewees saw as historically creating powerful influences on change.

Table 2.

Key Themes and Excerpts From Interviews With Established Researchers in the Development of Algae-Related Technologies.

Thematic Summary	Example Narrative (quote)
One sector’s waste is another sector’s priority.	“Throughout the history of algal-based wastewater treatment, there has been a tension between two agendas; industry might look at the algae that is grown as the key priority and goal..Wastewater scientists and regulators, meanwhile, ..see any algal products as co-benefits. Their primary goal and responsibility is to ensure the quality of treated effluent. It brings to forth the question of power and influence in any potential project. Surfacing these agendas is the secret to managing them.”
Industry contexts influence research.	“External pressure on the pork industry, for example, for it to deal with wastewater impacts, led to research with great circular opportunity pathways, but then climate took priority- and wastewater projects stalled.”
Precedents in community matter.	“...Someone has already been in the community pushing [circular ideas], but they failed ...it’s burnt the opportunity for the next player, no matter how good their ideas are.”

Across these reflections, it can be seen that the direction of research, and the technological development that it enables, doesn’t necessarily follow rational pathways. Instead, the influence of researcher preferences, chance, pressures of power in incumbent systems can be powerful influences on what is actually pursued.

Throughout this research project, a similar set of dynamics were encountered which we sought to deliberately surface and manage. For example, the influences of incumbent systems were reflected in the project’s initial framing–such as an assumed focus on micro-algae (rather than macro-algae), and preconceived ideas shaped the visions of cooperatives, site locations, and products that we carried into the project as individuals. The context of a transdisciplinary team and the use of systems scoping study created a useful opportunity to question and challenge these assumptions. Within this process, there were specific techniques and processes that helped. For example, the lead author used their status as an ‘outsider’ as a reason to ask ‘obvious’ questions to experts in other disciplines and to question norms that might be taken for granted in different disciplines across the team. While this approach was intuitively adopted, it reflects the efficacy of various ‘rules of thumb’ raised in by future studies theorist and practitioner Joseph Voros (2021), such as the role for a ‘consciously incompetent’ mindset that can assist the task of futures scanning.

There are compelling similarities between our project experience and those raised by other experts in algae-related innovation. In both cases, incumbent systems were found to hold great influence and there was much value in discussing the basis and normativity of the directions being taken. During our research project, we found a ‘sweet spot’ was required to balance how our research might engage with incumbent systems and the existing dynamics and actors that it contains, whilst still pursuing normative and deliberate transitions pathways. Achieving this balance required speculative exploration that embraced normative and exploratory possibilities but avoided (i) becoming so speculative that it lost relevance to the current context, (ii) lacking tangible links to a foreseeable transition pathway or (iii) the risk of alienating stakeholders within the team and beyond, that were pivotal to enabling action. This was an iterative process, and we found it useful to constantly (re)grounding exploratory ideas and iteratively testing those narratives with partners in our team. Using the constraints of specific places, partners, and technological limitations, as previously described, also helped to visualise and narrow these discussions and ensure the process and the timeline of ideation was aligned with pragmatic and strategic considerations like curating and engaging potential funders, partners etc.

Pragmatic Considerations: Funding Schemes, Research Niches, and Enabling Conditions

Unlocking the role of research (ers) in the pursuit of normative and transformative change is a promising opportunity, but it requires dedicated resources and capabilities. Cross-disciplinary funding programs and structures are crucial aspects required to enable this work to happen. For our project, an internal grant was available and was deliberately tailored to support the development of transdisciplinary research teams to explore normative opportunities and impacts (UTS 2024). More broadly however, there is a general lack funding for such normative exploration in the ecosystem of actors and funders that provide the bulk of funding for Australian research activities (Cetindamar et al. 2024; Doyle 2018; Fløysand et al. 2021; Rau et al. 2018). While recent decades have seen a shift toward funding research and innovation that considers social and environmental impact (DIISR 2011; National Reconstruction Fund Corporation 2024; Williams and Grant 2018), the formal design of the National Innovation System (NIS) in Australia, and the way innovation is discussed more broadly, retains a focuse on the pursuit of short-term commercial opportunities and economic impacts (ARC 2024a, 2024b; Cetindamar et al. 2024). While these ambitions are not in themselves misguided, the system currently lacks an affordance for normative and explorative work that can build capacities amongst researchers, and do the exploratory work required to develop new, novel and more tailored pathways for socio-technical change. In Australia, it seems fitting that there be space for explorative work by transdisciplinary groups of researchers to investigate the normative potential of their work. This seems specifically suited to the university sector, given its public funding, social mandate and direct connection to the start of the innovation system.

Alongside these aspirations for the future is an acknowledgement of the past. Given the funding environments like those above, it is perhaps no surprise that mainstream innovation systems tend to produce a type of change often described as reform, rather than enabling deeper levels of change (Geels et al. 2015). More troublingly, some researchers in sustainability transitions diagnose research as participating in the problem. There is an established diagnosis in transitions literature that calls for deep and wholesale shifts in the techno-economic paradigm that dominates global norms, suggesting dominant worldviews are part of what has created unsustainable impacts on the Earth (e.g., Meadows 1990; Schot and Kanger 2018; Waddell et al. 2015). Sharp critiques have emerged in specific relation to bioeconomic and circular economy, suggesting that sometimes innovation works against their stated goals, rather than toward them (Eversberg et al., 2023). More broadly, a need for critical awareness is now becoming accepted. This view observes that science and society are coproduced phenomena and that this carries it with it ethical and moral tensions. As Jasanoff (2004) put it, “ways of knowing the world are inseparably linked to the ways in which people seek to organize and control it”.

Alongside constraints from funding, there are emerging trends for change. Calls to take the politics of research seriously have mainstreamed calls to make knowledge coproduction directionally deliberate, critically engaged, and reflexive (Chambers et al. 2022; Fazey et al. 2020; Orlove et al. 2023; Wyborn et al. 2020). Chambers et al. (2022) ask research (ers) to elevate marginalised agendas, question dominant agendas, navigate conflict, and explore diverse ideas. Similar diagnoses have emerged from the discussion of place (Hakkarainen et al. 2022; Wearne 2023; West et al. 2019), and diverse knowledge systems (Orlove et al. 2023; Tengö et al. 2017).

Whilst acknowledging pragmatic constraints, we also identify that there are opportunities for agency. We have used our case study to demonstrate and discuss how research (ers) might pursue a critically reflexive and normative role in sustainability transitions. We have also outlined a range of resources, mindsets, skills and competencies that are required by researchers, or transdisciplinary teams, to undertake such work successfully. Helping to unlock the agency of researchers in the process of innovation may contribute to what Schot and Kanger (2018) described supporting surges of “niche-level” change that can collectively challenge current norms. Drawing on Perez (2002), achieving such change is bound-up in the influence of factors like access to capital and government policy that have been noted to shape (and change) techno-economic paradigms to date. At the individual level, there is a degree of bravery, and a sense of agency required for this work and as we have tried to capture in these reflections and discussions, the process requires a conscious approach to change rather than a preconceived strategy. Achieving this might be considered akin to the skill that systems scientist Donella Meadows (2001) called “dancing” with systems, and in our case, it relates to the ability and need for researchers to get the rhythm of the system that they engage with and to more fully exercise their capabilities to carefully, deliberately, and reflexively influence innovation in relation to other actors in society.

Conclusions

To conclude these reflections, we identify four activities below that draw together concrete implications that have been raised in this paper and its discussion:⁴

• Materialise future visions: There is a need to surface and articulate the politics and diversity of future visions into a form that can be adequately shared and discussed with others.

• Question and contextualise alternative directions: We need to question assumed priorities and dominant agendas, (re)evaluating the full breadth, normativity and feasibility of how one might contribute to futures and realise specific pathways. Doing so invites consideration of the resonance and relevance to different actors, and the specific contexts of place, and the present system.

• Strategize potential pathways and interventions: There is value in strategically and iteratively probing opportunities that might be latent in the system, exploring room to make preferred pathways real and impactful amidst the current funding, technical and cultural environment.

• Act: Ultimately, our project was just one example of a broader set of shifts that sees value in creating systemic opportunities for researchers to explore how they can participate in responsible research innovation toward directionally normative futures. While not all projects will eventuate in direct impacts, participating in this development can benefit broader norms and opportunities to include normativity and diversity in the process of innovation and technological research.

These actions describe a nuanced approach to tasks under the auspices of Transition Design (Irwin 2018) or Transition Management (Loorbach 2009) and the sentiments that they carry surface what have been suggested as ‘co-productive agilities’ that are required to support a more normative coproduction of research and society (Chambers et al. 2022). They also mirror lessons raised by researchers seeking to weave normative and diverse knowledge systems into science (Tengö et al. 2017). While the headings of these actions may seem straightforward, the discussion and reflections that we’ve presented shows that there are complexities in their enactment.

Researchers, like all people, are inherent participants in the creation of the future. Our specific roles in technological innovation can be a powerful influence on the socio-technical systems that we live in and the futures that we create. We can either serve and sustain the goals and directions of an incumbent future-making system or we can choose a more deliberate, critical and engaged role.

This paper has presented a case study and discussion that asks if and how reflexive and deliberate approaches to technological innovation might be pursued in ways that enable research (ers) to enact more diverse and compelling pathways to sustainable futures. By sharing reflections on our work and discussing these in relation to broader trends in the literature, we have outlined opportunities to move forward and reflected on key lessons and insights to consider. Overall, the discussion calls for a shift in how the role of research (ers) in innovation is conceptualised and supported. We suggest that there is a need to move past a view that sees research (ers) as passive participants in planned change to one that enacts what Donella Meadows (2001) described as work that “dances” with socio-technical systems. Depending on our rhythm and our footwork, we can either move with the status quo, or we can more critically and deliberately play a role that lets the futures that want to be woven into reality.

Footnotes

Acknolwedgements

Thanks go to our UTS colleagues and the industry representatives that participated in the project and to Ella Williams for the use of her photos.

Author Contributions

SW led the conceptualisation and original drafting of the article,all authors engaged in the analysis,reviewing,and editing process and approved of the final version. KS obtained the funding for the project that was studied.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,authorship,and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research,authorship,and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the UTS 2027 Cross Faculty Collaboration Scheme (PRO21-12590).

Ethical Statement

ORCID iDs

Samuel Wearne

Kate Scardifield

Notes

Author Biographies

Samuel Wearne is a sustainability practitioner,lecturer,and researcher. He is based at the Transdisciplinary School of the University of Technology Sydney.

Thomas Lee is a Senior Lecturer in Design Studies at the Faculty of Design Architecture and Building at the University of Technology Sydney.

Kate Scardifield is an acclaimed artist,an Associate Professor,and the Co-Director of the Material Ecologies Design Lab in the Faculty of Design,Architecture and Building at the University of Technology Sydney. Kate works closely with the UTS Climate Change Cluster (C3) and is a member of the Algal Biosystems and Biotechnology group.

Rachael Wakefield-Rann is a Research Principle and Senior Consultant at the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney.

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Applied Transition Design for Socio-Ecological Outcomes: Local Movements,Incumbent Systems,and the Need for Agile Weaving

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Theoretical and Thematic Background

Transition Design, Futures Studies, and Sustainability Science

Bioeconomic Discourse and the Pursuit of Algae-Related Innovation as a Socio-Technical Panacea

Methodology, Data and Limitations

Case Study Review: What Worked, What didn’t, and Insights that Were Generated

Insights and Implications for Transition Design and Systems Change

Imagining Through the Process: Aesthetics, Place, and Precedent are Latent and Subconscious Factors that (re)frame Our Visions and Aspirations

Chance, Choice, and Incumbent Systems: Questioning Preconceptions and Drivers on the Direction and Role of Research

Pragmatic Considerations: Funding Schemes, Research Niches, and Enabling Conditions

Conclusions

Footnotes

Acknolwedgements

Author Contributions

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

Ethical Statement

ORCID iDs

Notes

Author Biographies

References