The 13th International Sustainability Transitions Conference (IST), hosted for the first time as a partnership between three universities on three different continents, will take place from November 21 to 25, 2022.

This year Stellenbosch University, Monash University, and Georgetown University will partner to create a week with a truly global experience that involves both online and in-person activities, in which conference participants will virtually travel through three different time zones and continents, with the opportunity to meet in person either in South Africa, Australia, or the United States of America.

The IST is the central event of the international transitions research community and is organized annually by different partners on behalf of the Sustainability Transitions Research Network (STRN). STRN comprises more than 1500 international researchers from various disciplines and produces more than 500 publications in specialist journals every year. The research network and the annual conference address the question of how the transition to sustainability can succeed through co-evolutionary changes and innovations in socio-technical systems.

The conference will be run through a single integrated conference and abstract submission system. Over the course of the week, each university will virtually host 1 online conference day on the conference platform, in their respective time-zone. This is followed by 1 in-person conference day in Stellenbosch, Melbourne, and Washington DC.

The in-person conference days will mirror the general conference tracks and session formats, but also provide regional emphasis through keynotes and special sessions. Next to the overall conference themes, the focus of the South African in-person conference day organised by Stellenbosch University will be a review of Africa’s just energy transition dynamics and challenges considering the outcomes of the UNFCCC COP 27. The in-person day organised by Monash University will place emphasis on the role of actors and behaviour change in place-based and just sustainability transitions. The in-person day organised by Georgetown University in Washington, DC, will focus on the governance and questions of justice related to the funding of sustainability transitions.

Over the week-long conference, IST2022 will welcome its 250+ speakers on their virtual platform across 10 parallel tracks on subjects such as:

1) Sustainability Transitions in a Global Context
2) Understanding transitions – conceptual contributions to transition frameworks
3) Methodologies for transitions research
4) Governing transitions
5) Organizations and industries in transitions
6) Politics, power and policy in transitions
7) Movements, culture, and civil society in transitions
8) Transitions in practice and everyday life
9) Geography of transitions
10) Ethical aspects of transitions

Conference participants can expect keynotes from experts such as:

  • Prof Xuemai Bai, Distinguished Professor, Urban Environment and Human Ecology, Fenner School of Environment and Society
  • Dr Chantal Naidoo, Founder and Principal Associate of Rabia Greening Finance
  • Prof Edgar Pieterse, Director of the African Centre for Cities and South African Research Chair in Urban Policy
  • Dr Flor Avelino, Professor of Organizations and Sustainability
  • Prof Benjamin Sovacool, Professor of Energy Policy (SPRU – Science Policy Research Unit), University of Sussex Business School

The program can be found here and the speaker list here. For more information on the conference, please visit the IST website here: https://consultus.eventsair.com/ist2022-conference