[EASST-Eurograd] CfP NESS Conference 9-11 June - Temporalities of low-carbon transitions

[Bregje van Veelen via Eurograd]

Interested in the histories, futures, speeds, rhythms or other temporal aspects of low-carbon transitions? If so, we'd like to invite you to submit an abstract to our session at next year's Nordic Environmental Social Science (NESS) conference, held from 9-11 June in Uppsala, Sweden.

Low-carbon transitions are not only spatial but also deeply temporal. Despite their centrality, temporal dimensions of transitions have received less explicit conceptual and empirical attention than spatial ones. While inroads are being made, certain topics and approaches have gained more visibility than others. In recent years, for example, a burgeoning body of work has focused on anticipating and imagining futures, seeking to pluralize these beyond those included in scientific scenarios or roadmaps. In contrast, the role of the past has remained comparatively underexplored, aside from a few key concepts, such as path dependency. Elsewhere, anthropological and humanities research has advanced the “politics of time”, highlighting how infrastructures’ are entangled with promissory, future-oriented temporalities. Yet, the uptake of these ideas in social science scholarship on low-carbon transitions is still fairly

This workshop addresses the different ways of knowing and organizing time. We ask: How can different conceptual, disciplinary and empirical approaches to temporality be connected? How can policy timeframes (e.g. “net zero by 2050”) be reconciled with lived temporalities of communities and practitioners? How can the urgency of rapid decarbonization be bridged with slower institutional change, or with legacies that shape possible futures?

The aim is to make the temporal dimensions of low-carbon transitions more explicit across social sciences, humanities, and policy-relevant research. We invite both conceptual and empirical fully drafted manuscripts that address temporal gaps in transitions, including but not limited to:

• Conceptualizing time: how time can be known, theorized, and observed in transitions.
• Interacting temporalities: past-present-future entanglements, nostalgia, anticipation, uncertainty.
• Experiencing and governing time: speed, urgency, deadlines, tipping points, and their political effects.
• The politics of possibility: speculation, open futures, and the sustaining of uncertainty.
• Scales of time: from everyday rhythms to geological epochs and planetary thresholds.
  
  

Convenors:

Bregje van Veelen, Centre for Sustainability Studies, Lund University, Sweden

Magdalena Kuchler, Natural Resources and Sustainable Development, Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University, Sweden

The full call can be found here (workshop #27): https://www.uu.se/en/department/earth-sciences/research/natural-resources-and-sustainable-development/ness2026/workshops. Abstracts are to be submitted via the same link.

The abstract submission deadline is 8 December.

For those unfamiliar with NESS, it is a great conference where you have the opportunity to spend 2-3 days in small groups discussing (nearly completed) drafts of papers. As a result, it is a very fruitful and engaged way for developing one's own work and connecting with colleagues.

Best wishes,

Bregje

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Bregje van Veelen

Associate Senior Lecturer (Assistant Professor), Docent

Director of PhD studies

LUCSUS

Lund University

bregje.v...@lucsus.lu.se

https://www.lucsus.lu.se/bregje-van-veelen

www.post-carbon.co.uk 

Recent publications:

• Van Veelen, B. & Kuchler, M. (2025) Beyond linear progress: Towards a material-temporal understanding of infrastructural unmaking. Futures, 103730.
• Van Veelen, B. (2025) A tale of two coals: the politics of time in coal phase out, Environmental Politics, 1-20.