
Dr. Paolo Cherubini and PhD students Jack Boulton and Florian Aherns accepted the award for Best Student Paper. Professor Susan Krumdieck and the team presented two important workshops on Transition Engineering processes and curriculum.
The Transition Engineering research team at Heriot-Watt University has been working for the past three years to contribute to the discipline through practical action research on whole-systems approaches and methods to accelerate transitions away from unsustainable energy and material systems. The team made a significant impact at the Transdisciplinary Engineering Conference TE2024 in London after submiting five peer reviewed papers which were published in the proceedings and presented at the conference.
The team also organised and presented two workshops. The first workshop presented the turning point argument – that historical transitions involve creation of the discipline to correct the problems with an otherwise profitable enterprise. That creation requires a turning point amongst practical engineers and employees and a collaboration with scientists and researchers to evaluate the risks, uncover the source of the problems, and carry out the applied research to recommend policy and regulation changes. Participants shared their own turning point stories and crafted a turning point narrative for their industry. The second workshop posited that the corrective transdiscipline of Systems Transition Engineering is needed to address the complex wicked problems posed by energy transition, and invited participants to participate in a “summit” to create the curriculum for the first Systems Transition Engineering Programme (The First STEP). All of the papers were well received by the audience, and the Transition Engineering team were mentioned during the opening ceremonies for bringing a new and important contribution to the field of sustainability engineering.
F. Ahrens, P. Cherubini, J. Boulton, M. Bartholomew, S. Krumdieck (2024). The first rule of Transition Engineering is define the wicked problem, Advances in Transdisciplinary Engineering, Vol. 60: Engineering For Social Change, 349-358.
J. Boulton, S. Krumdieck (2024). Transition Engineering Sprint with Oil Industry Experts: Finding the possibility for climate-safe business strategies, Advances in Transdisciplinary Engineering, Vol. 60: Engineering For Social Change, 494-503.
F. Ahrens, J. Boulton, P. Cherubini, S. Krumdieck (2024). School Run to Net Zero: a Transition Engineering Labs use case report, Advances in Transdisciplinary Engineering, Vol. 60: Engineering For Social Change, 855-864.
P. Cherubini, F. Ahrens, M. Andoni, B. Couraud, Jo. Kilgour, D. Kirli, Z. Iqbal, S. Norbu, A. Papathanasi, L. Webb, S. Krumdieck (2024). The Challenge of Ending Fuel Poverty: A Transition Engineering Research Sprint, Advances in Transdisciplinary Engineering, Vol. 60: Engineering For Social Change, 1008-1017.
S. Krumdieck, S. Doughty, G. Rodriguez-Navas, A. Whiteside, I. Roderick (2024). Argument for Convergence: Sustainability diaspora to corrective transdiscipline, Advances in Transdisciplinary Engineering, Vol. 60: Engineering For Social Change, 1029-1038.