Biography

Helen Sharp has been a research fellow at the IÖW since early 2018. In 2017, she earned her degree in political science from the Free University of Berlin with a thesis on the concept of a “just transition” and German trade union’s approaches to structural change. For her thesis, she was awarded the 2017 Research Award by Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND). Her research interests include the potentials and barriers to a just transition, dealing with cross-cutting cooperation between social and environmental organisations and the role of politics (and policy) in facilitating social negotiation and common learning processes. Moreover, Helen Sharp has gained experience in the field of sustainability transitions research as part of the “Deep Transitions” project.

Also by this author

International organisations and the governance of deep transitions: The case of a transition towards a circular economy

This paper contributes to a recent strand of work within the field of sustainability transitions that combines the multi-level perspective on socio-technical transitions with techno-economic paradigm thinking. Schot and Kanger (2018) and Kanger and Schot (2018) developed a framework which aims to explain the emergence, acceleration, stabilization and directionality of deep transitions. They define a…
Blog - December 18, 2019

International organisations as drivers of transformative change: The case of the European Union and the circular economy

Global ecological degradation and growing social inequalities are two major challenges our world is facing in the 21st century. These challenges have been created by practices of mass production and consumption that have come to dominate societal systems since the onset of the industrial revolution, about 250 years ago. These practices, based for example on…