Biography

Professor Ed Steinmueller is an economist who received his PhD from Stanford University in 1987. His professional life has been divided between the US and Europe and between three institutions – Stanford, Maastricht University and SPRU at the University of Sussex. Throughout his career, he has analysed the interaction between society and information and communication technologies. However, he has a broad range of interests in other technologies and industries stemming from a persistent curiosity about knowledge, technique and organisation interact to create new market structures and transform human activities. Throughout his career, he has also been engaged with questions of policy – including regulation – as it pertains to science, industrial policy, and social well being. In recent years he has been deeply involved with efforts to imagine new approaches to science, technology and social action that would support a transition toward a more environmentally and economically sustainable world, principally through the Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium and Deep Transitions Project initiated at SPRU.

Also by this author

Deep transitions: A mixed methods study of the historical evolution of mass production

Abstract Industrial societies contain a range of socio-technical systems fulfilling functions such as the provision of energy, food, mobility, housing, healthcare, finance and communications. The recent Deep Transitions (DT) framework outlines a series of propositions on how the multi-system co-evolution over 250 years of these systems has contributed to several current social and ecological crises….

The Promise Of Transformative Investment: Mapping The Field Of Sustainability Investing

This paper addresses the question: How can private finance be mobilized for sociotechnical sustainability transitions? In answering this question, maps the sustainability investment literature, which leads to four propositions: (1) The literature on sustainability investing coevolved with corporate social responsibility theory and with the practice and events of the field, revealing four distinctive waves of…
Blog - November 15, 2021

Transformative Investment for Impact in the 21st Century towards the Sustainability Revolution and Beyond COP 26

    This blog reviews a few new ideas on Transformative Investment research from the Deep Transitions Futures project. The Deep Transitions Futures project is run by an interlinking team of researchers and science communicators from the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex Business School, and the Utrecht University Centre for…

Workshop Report: Deep Transition in the Transatlantic Zone in the Long Twentieth Century, 18-20 May

With the first phase of the Deep Transitions project drawing to a close, the Deep Transitions workshop on 18-20 May presented acquired findings to a broader community of scholars with pertinent backgrounds, and opened up emerging ideas to critical scrutiny. The workshop intended to provide a space for constructive dialogue and discussion, including the future…
Blog - May 6, 2020

Computing: A Change in Rules for the Deep Transition?

It is commonly said that we live in the digital or information age, an acknowledgement of the centrality of information and communication technologies in our daily work and private lives.  It is often believed that technologies such as the laptop computer and mobile phone come about because of the inventive genius of an individual or…

Episode 5: A good day at the office? The role of IT and the central office in Deep Transitions

Deep Transitions
Deep Transitions
Episode 5: A good day at the office? The role of IT and the central office in Deep Transitions
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It’s often tempting to see technology and humanity as two separate domains. In this week’s podcast, A good day at the office? The role of IT and the central office in Deep Transitions, Ed Steinmueller tells the unexpectedly compelling story of the intertwined development of workers and the technological aids they developed for record keeping…