Selected Research Publications

Here you will be able to find relevant academic articles and book chapters written as part of POTRANSI.

Resources for Practitioners

Here you will be able to find relevant blogs, videos, and webinars created in POTRANSI

POTRANSI kick-off: Storytelling our way into understanding Power  

Leon Hoogendijk CC BY 4.0. 

Author: Séréna Aupoix 

Close your eyes and take a few seconds to ponder this question: What was a moment you felt powerful or powerless in creating change? In this blog, POTRANSI team member Séréna Aupoix reflects on discussions and insights from the first official POTRANSI event in May 2025.  

It is a deceptively simple question, but it pulled me deep into memory – back to an eco-village and eco-retreat in Lanzarote, where I once worked as a sustainability consultant. That time taught me something visceral about change and power: how inspiring, fleeting, and complex it can feel all at once. This personal notion of feeling either powerful or powerless, opened the space for our very first discussion at the POTRANSI kickoff on Power in Transition last month. A vibrant gathering that wove together stories, experiences, and knowledge through story triads, collaborative mapping, rich discussions, and a World Café. In this blog, I take you along the collective journey of our event.  

In POTRANSI we approach social innovation and transformation from a power perspective, and as a collaboration between academics and practitioners. Social innovation, at its core, is about new ways of thinking, doing, and organising that change social relations. We explore how social innovations can reshape power relations toward more just and sustainable societies, while grappling with the paradox that scaling these innovations may dilute their transformative potential—a complexity we argue must be unpacked amongst diverse actors.  

We hosted our very first kickoff at the House of Active Citizenship in the Neude Library in Utrecht. The kickoff was designed to connect leading thinkers and doers at the intersection of power, transformation, and social innovation. We explored the co-creation of a Community of Practice on Power in Transition, and kicked off our POTRANSI project including the Transformative Power Arena we will be organising. We welcomed a diverse group of individuals, from eco-communities and housing commons to decentralised energy networks and research institutions to collaboratively explore everyday power dilemmas and challenges in practice. This was guided by our central calling question: How does power in transition work and what roles can we play in it?   

But – how to start a conversation about power? 

Storytelling… 

Storytelling offers a tool to uproot complex and discomforting discussions and practices surrounding power in social innovation. We therefore opened our kickoff with the tranquil beauty of storytelling, using so called ‘story triads’. In groups of three, participants shared and deeply listened to stories triggered by the question: What was a moment you felt powerful or powerless in creating change?  

As this question was echoing in my mind, I meandered over to a table to pick up a Dixit card that spoke to me: it was one of an island curved in the form of the body of a woman, with eyes and long hair, longingly, yet proudly, looking over the edge of its earth into the distant ocean where a singular ship sailed into the horizon: this card embodied the story I wanted to share.  

Here is the Dixit card I used to illustrate my story in the eco-village and eco-retreat of Lanzarote. Picture taken from Amazon.

I explained how a couple of years ago I was working in an eco-village and eco-retreat in Lanzarote, where I had been employed as a sustainability consultant. Immersed in this role and bubbling with energy to make a change within this space, whilst also contributing to the larger sustainability of Lanzarote, I had two big aspirations. The first was for the eco–retreat to become completely plastic-free. The second was that it should only use products from local, independent producers, and artisans to divest and boycott larger, mainstream industries owned by non-local businesses.  

A picture of me watering our edible garden in the eco-village and eco-retreat of Lanzarote.

One of the first steps I took was to identify all the sources of plastic across the eco-retreat and eco-village, finding out that the largest contributors were the toiletries provided in the accommodations. Weaving across local networks, I collaborated with a traditional, feminist soap company called Mama y Pepa. They craft local, natural soaps based on a grandmother’s recipe, and are inspired by the island’s volcanic elements. Small practices like this can spark real transformation, where I shared these ideas with the local municipality to help drive change around plastic toiletries across the entire island. 

In that moment I felt powerful and hopeful in the change that was being achieved and received, following in the footsteps of Cesare Manrique – a renowned artist, and political and ecological activist that defending the cultural and natural heritage of Martinique. I felt tall and strong, like in the Dixit card, held by the powerful foundations of the island, curved in the form of the body of a woman.  

Yet, this fleeting moment of feeling powerful was taken away from me and replaced by a sense of feeling powerless. Upon reconsideration, the new CEO dismissed the changes around plastic toiletries as a waste of time and money, reverting to the old practice of reusing small plastic bottles wrapped in plastic packages. I was then asked to shift to the sales department, with the justification that ‘sustainability’ efforts were seen as impractical and ineffective—an initiative unlikely to bring measurable value or immediate returns to the company. In that moment, like in the Dixit card, I became the singular boat, floating amidst the vast, harsh, and uncertain ocean.  

Once all three stories in my group had been shared, we took some time to reflect on our notions of feeling powerful and powerless in moments of creating change. We translated our reflections visually to explain the relation between moments of power and powerlessness. As shown in the picture below, for both powerful and powerless moments, context deeply matters. Through different life experiences and contexts, our individual, intersectional identities—such as where we come from, how and where we were raised, where we have studied, our gender, and more—are constantly shifting. This fluidity is symbolised in the image by the changing shapes and symbols. 

A key force driving these changes is time. Time, along with context, deeply influenced how each of us engaged with and made sense of moments of power in change. But here, time wasn’t simply understood in a linear sense of past and present. Instead, it was seen as cyclical—something that evolves and loops, shaped by ongoing power dynamics and our changing interpretations in moments of transformation through life.  

The visual picture of our reflections on the story triads. Picture done by the author.

As we listened to reflections from the other groups, themes began to emerge. Structures and context, community and relationships, emotions, and individual capabilities all shape how people experience and make sense of power and powerlessness in the process of creating change.  

When telling stories of powerlessness, individuals often reflected on the presence of oppressive, distant, and non-transparent systems that exist in our society — structures such as capitalism or colonialism that made them feel excluded or unable to influence change. In contrast, moments of feeling powerful were tied to breaking norms, sharing knowledge and practices, and navigating uncertainty—made possible through strong, supportive networks and relationships. For example, individuals mentioned how they collectively organised a community meeting in their housing cooperative to mobilise a sustainable energy transition towards solar panels.

These reflections bring us back to the question: how do you start a conversation about power? It’s a question that not only stands on its own, but also ties directly into the broader, overarching calling question that framed our kickoff event. 

Storytelling enabled participants to spark a tangible, deeply personal, and introspective conversation about power. Opening these complex topics allowed for needs to emerge in our space. Over the course of the afternoon, we introduced the concept of power literacy, and invited participants into an interactive mapping session. This allowed us to explore how people understand and engage with four key social innovation trends—eco-communities, decentralised energy, the sharing economy, and participatory democracy—and to identify initiatives and networks that could be part of this evolving landscape.  

We then moved into a World Café, asking individuals how they encounter and make sense of power dynamics in their practice and what they would need to be better equipped to deal with power. To close, we asked participants to reflect on the idea of co-creating a community of practice: How could a community of practice make a difference for you in how you deal with power? And when would it not be helpful? 

Throughout the afternoon, participants stressed the importance of practice; that practice should not be a ‘floating’ word but should be the focus of collaboration. Examples of these were to create a form of Intervision, or a ‘Power Pizza Party’, where the abstract concept of power in social innovation can be practiced through shared reflection, embodied dialogue, and co-created rituals that surface dynamics often left unspoken.  

We invite you to ask yourself: What was a moment you felt powerful or powerless in creating change? And what can you learn from your answer? How might it inform your role in shaping collective spaces, relations, and practices for transformation, and in understanding the conditions that make power visible, shareable, and potentially transformative?  

We warmly invite you to connect with us for the coming years and to think together and learn from this question. You can read about Transformative Power Arena here. 

You can also sign up for our newsletter here: https://potransi.sites.uu.nl/join-us/ or join us on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/potransi/.