Biography

Johan Schot is the project leader of the Deep Transitions research project and academic director of the Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium (TIPC). He is Professor of Global History and Sustainability Transitions at the Utrecht Centre for Global Challenges, Utrecht University and former Director of the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex Business School.

Together with Laur Kanger, Schot has published two of the key articles feeding into the Deep Transitions research, namely Deep Transitions: Emergence, Acceleration, Stabilization and Directionality (Schot & Kanger, 2018) and Deep Transitions: Theorizing the Long-Term Patterns of Socio-Technical Change (Schot & Kanger, 2019). In 2019, the five-year programme (2017-2022) received a philanthropic donation of £1,5million by Baillie Gifford.

At the Centre for Global Challenges, Schot is in the process of developing a Global Expert Panel on the 4th industrial revolution and Deep Transitions. The panel aims at shaping the public debate and steering future innovation towards a more sustainable trajectory. The panel will comprise of a group of key people who have expert knowledge of particular socio-technical systems needed to develop rigorous scenarios that will test the Deep Transitions model further.

Personal Website: http://www.johanschot.com/

Also by this author

The Effect Of Shocks On Sustainability Transitions

The role of exogenous shocks in influencing transition process is of significant interest to diverse literatures in Sustainability Science. Such events disturb and interrupt path dependent processes in ecological, economic, social, and technological systems. Sometimes this can lead to radical departures from existing trajectories and at other times existing systems can be more resilient, adapting…

The changing landscape of deep transitions: Sociotechnical imprinting and chemical warfare

Abstract This paper addresses a major gap in sustainability transitions research: the role of shocks in shaping transition dynamics. The papers focuses on shocks with traumatic consequences, in particular World War I and II. The paper revisits discussions on the sociotechnical landscape in the Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) and Deep Transition framework, offering refined versions of…

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…
Consequences of COVID-19
Blog - April 6, 2020

Conversaciones sobre COVID-19: consecuencias para la segunda transición profunda y la revolución de la sostenibilidad

Por: Johan Schot , Bipashyee Ghosh y Geraldine Bloomfield Traducido por: Diana Velasco, investigadora invitada de Ingenio UPV-CSIC. Comentarios para la versión en español de la entrevista, por Diana Velasco Un mundo en transición profunda, empujado a hacer cambios radicales en los patrones de conducta, de comportamiento, y de valores de las personas, más que por una dirección…
Consequences of COVID-19
Blog - March 25, 2020

Conversations on COVID-19: Consequences for the Second Deep Transition and the Sustainability Revolution 

The COVID-19 public health emergency facing the world is the worst in living memory. It is changing everyday life in an immediate and stark fashion not seen, arguably, since the Second World War. The, perhaps unhelpful, metaphor of ‘war’ is being used to evoke our attempts at mastering the attacking virus. In the worst-hit country,…

Episode 2: Investing in the Era of Deep Transitions: Professor Johan Schot in Conversation with James Anderson

Deep Transitions
Deep Transitions
Episode 2: Investing in the Era of Deep Transitions: Professor Johan Schot in Conversation with James Anderson
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What can the worlds of finance and academia learn from each other? Will technological innovations like electric vehicles be enough to avert climate catastrophe, or will we need to reinvent social norms like the very concept of personal vehicle ownership entirely? Should those concentrating on electrification, like TESLA, diversify into ‘mobility-as-a-service’ rather than just the…

Deep transitions: Theorizing the long-term patterns of sociotechnical change

Journal Article | Founding Deep Transitions Paper The contemporary world is confronted by a double challenge: environmental degradation and social inequality. This challenge is linked to the dynamics of the First Deep Transition (Schot, 2016): the creation and expansion of a wide range of socio-technical systems in a similar direction over the past 200–250 years. Extending the…

Deep Transitions: Emergence, acceleration, stabilization and directionality

Journal Article | Founding Deep Transitions Paper Industrial society has not only led to high levels of wealth and welfare in the Western world, but also to increasing global ecological degradation and social inequality. The socio-technical systems that underlay contemporary societies have substantially contributed to these outcomes. This paper proposes that these sociotechnical systems are…