Research Team

Flor Avelino, Professor, Principal Investigator

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise.” (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

Over the past 20 years, I have been working as a researcher and lecturer on social innovation and power relations in just sustainability transitions. As professor at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University, I am grateful to collaborate with researchers and students who share my passionate curiosity around transformations towards more sustainable and just futures. As principle investigator in the POTRANSI project, I aim to combine theory, empirics and action to analyse, critique, and design the role of power in processes of transformation and social innovation. 

Want to know more about me, find me here.

Tessa de Geus, Postdoc Researcher

“They’ll never take away my power, my power, my power.” (Beyoncé et al, 2019)

Why is society organised the way it is? Why is that accepted? And what might we do about that? For me, these questions all boil down to the concept of power – if we are going to change anything towards better lives and futures for people, animals and our planet we need to deepen what we know about power and how we deal with it. That is what motivates me everyday to work on the POTRANSI project – learning from and with social innovators and colleagues about what alternatives are possible, and how we might develop actions and capacities to get there. Before POTRANSI, I have conducted research about governmentality (Foucault!) and cooperatives, and ‘capture’ of social innovation as it moves the mainstream (see here). I have over 12+ years of experience working on social innovation in research and practice in the Netherlands and across Europe.  

As a postdoc on the POTRANSI-project, I am designing and developing the Transformative Power Arena, and researching how Theatre of the Oppressed can help to surface transformative power stories and ‘rehearse’ together to train power literacy.  

Want to know more about me, find me here.

Lena Hartog, PhD Candidate

“I believe that all organizing is science fiction — that we are shaping the future we long for and have not yet experienced.” (Adrienne Maree Brown)

As a researcher, writer, and organiser, I explore how social movements and bottom-up alternatives contribute to just and sustainable transformations. After a decade of campaigning and facilitating collective action, I’m now pursuing a PhD within the POTRANSI project on power in transformative social innovation. I focus on how grassroots initiatives navigate the emotional dimensions of change, build power literacy, and prefigure post-growth futures. 

My research brings theory into dialogue with lived experience, drawing on pluriversal politics, social movement strategies, the Art of Hosting, and action research. 

Want to know more about me, find me here.

Fábio Gouveia, PhD Candidate

I join the POTRANSI research project as a PhD candidate committed to exploring the entanglements between power, narrative and transformation, with insatiable curiosity about how different stories, identities and worldviews (can) come together to drive change. My hope is that unpacking these notions as they manifest around social innovation practices can help inform pursuits for greater justice and sustainability. In this role, I am involved in the mapping of social innovation initiatives and networks, responsible for conducting field work and analysis of case studies, as well as contributing to the development of theoretical frameworks and knowledge co-production methods. 

Want to know more about me, find me here.

Luana Kiehl, Student Assistant

“Radical simply means grasping things at the root.” 
“You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.” (both by Angela Davis)

Concluding the Sustainable Development Master’s at UU, I am writing my thesis on how liberation movements, through creative practices, foster imaginaries of (more-than-human) belonging as an answer to ‘othering’. I am excited about POTRANSI’s critical and explicit engagement with (structural) power dynamics (such as colonialism, patriarchy, and capitalism) and the potential of transformative social innovations to prefigure just alternatives by challenging, altering, or replacing those. My responsibilities within POTRANSI revolve around co-creating the Transformative Power Arena, conducting literature reviews, and mapping relevant social innovation initiatives and networks.   

Want to know more about me, find me here.  

Séréna Aupoix, Student Assistant

“The master’s tool will never dismantle the master’s house.” (Audre Lorde)

As I enter my second year of the Sustainable Development Master’s at Utrecht University, I find myself deeply reflecting on sustainability dilemmas, leading me to critically engage with Audre Lorde: Can transformative change happen from within the system, using its own tools to dismantle (un)sustainable and (un)just challenges? I therefore joined POTRANSI, drawn to its potential for driving transformative change through social innovation, whilst simultaneously recognising that transformation should be approached with a critical lens. My responsibilities as part of the team include co-designing the Transformative Power Arena, mapping social innovation initiatives and networks, and conducting literature reviews.  

Want to know more about me, find me here.

Tamara Soltys, Student Assistant

I chose to pursue a Master’s in Sustainable Business and Innovation at Utrecht University during a time when the war in my home country – Ukraine – made it hard to imagine a better future, both for myself and the world. Studying sustainability transitions amid political turmoil requires an almost religious leap of faith—a belief that the best in humanity can prevail. This belief drives my academic interests and research. I joined POTRANSI because it brings a crucial power perspective to analysing such real-world challenges and aims to build essential power literacy skills in collaboration with social innovators. Within the project, I focus on mapping diverse social innovation initiatives and networks, and co-designing the Transformative Power Arena methodology. 

Want to know more about me, find me here.

Anna Ravizza, Intern

“There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew.” (Marshall McLuhan)

I am in the final stages of my master’s degree in governance of Sustainability Transformations at Wageningen University. For some years now, I have been interested in democratic innovations like citizens’ assemblies and how they emerge in political systems, integrating and/or potentially clashing with the existing governance structures. I am driven by the question of how we can meaningfully engage with each other in the face of injustice and deepening interconnected crises. As an intern in the POTRANSI project I am mainly contributing to mapping social innovation initiatives in the realm of participatory democracy and enriching the project wherever I can introduce my expertise.  

Want to know more about me, find me here.

Jonas Torrens, Assistant Professor, and Supervision Team

“Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope.” (Ursula K. Le Guin)

I’m an assistant professor at Utrecht University, researching and teaching on sustainability transitions, innovation, and collaborative research methods. I’m especially interested in how people come together to create change — through experiments, mass mobilisations, unusual collaborations – to respond to pressing societal challenges. I move between academic and practitioner communities, across domains, driven by a curiosity about how research can be both lived and learned, and by a deep interest in diverse ways of knowing. I try to stay attentive to process, to the felt dimensions of collaboration, and to the often unseen assumptions that shape how we work together. 

I joined POTRANSI because it offers space to engage critically with the role of power and social innovations in transformation. I’m drawn to the project’s commitment to working alongside practitioners, questioning dominant frames, and learning from those already doing the difficult work of change. For me, POTRANSI is a place to reflect, connect, and contribute to building the kinds of systems and relationships that meaningful transformation requires. 

Want to know more about me, find me here.

Bonno Pel, Assistant Professor, and Supervision Team

“Die rastlose Selbstzerstörung der Aufklärung zwingt das Denken dazu, sich auch die letzte Arglosigkeit gegenüber den Gewohnheiten und Richtungen des Zeitgeistes zu verbieten.” (T.W. Adorno)

“The restless self-destruction of the Enlightenment compels thought to renounce even the last trace of innocence toward the habits and tendencies of the spirit of the age.” (T.W. Adorno)

Since my readings of Theodor Adorno, I have tried to keep working in this critical spirit. Not giving in to the warm glow of shallow consensus and intellectual fashion, trying the difficult paths. As a teacher and researcher in sustainability transitions and social innovations, I aim to grasp the difficulties of thinking, doing, and organising radically differently. It is exciting to participate in POTRANSI. I hope to bring in my expertise in social theory and methodology, and to jointly explore social innovation efforts: The big innovation challenges of today and tomorrow!  

Want to know more about me, find me here.

Kristina Bogner, Assistant Professor, and Supervision Team

“The time has come to tell the truth. Again. There is no love without justice. (…). If we remain unable to imagine a world where love can be recognized as a unifying principle that can lead us to seek and use power wisely, then we will remain wedded to a culture of domination that requires us to choose power over love.” (Bell Hooks)

I work as an interdisciplinary researcher and teacher breathing to fight for more just and sustainable worlds. I advocate for affective transformations, for acknowledging “that ‘the’ world is not ending, but ‘a’ world is, and that some worlds need to end in order to allow others room to breathe. Which worlds we nurture matters.” (Blanche Verlie). In my research and teaching, I am mostly interested in justice, emotions, and transformative action. I contribute to POTRANSI as a researcher and PhD supervisor, particularly by investigating the roles of emotions in transformative social innovation and alternative methods. 

Want to know more about me, find me here.