In September, several members of the CO-SUSTAIN consortium travelled to Kaunas, Lithuania to attend the Joint ESA RN12 ‘Environment and Society’ mid-term and the 7th Energy and Society Conference “Societal responses to environmental crises and energy transitions”.

In a joint session on Civic Participation and Collective Action, Alessandro Sciullo (UNITO), Michael Klingler (BOKU) and Jana Plöchl (BOKU) had the opportunity to present and discuss CO-SUSTAIN’s research design, theoretical approach, and first results from the empirical research on Historic Examples of participation. Matti Kojo (LUT) chaired a session on the socio-spatial dimensions of Energy and Climate Justice, offering valuable insights into spatial imaginaries and community visions of the energy transition and the relational construction of energy poverty.

The researchers also had the opportunity to participate in several special sessions with high relevance for the work done in CO-SUSTAIN, such as the session on “Doing Participatory Research on the Unknown and Uncertain” organized by Janna Gehrke and Laura Schmidt (Climate Service Center Germany) and a workshop on Participatory Systems Mapping hosted by Timothy Marcroft (Western Norway University of Applied Sciences), Meda Andrijauskiene, Daiva Dumciuviene (Kaunas University of Technology) and Katherine Mahoney (Universidade NOVA de Lisboa).

Many thanks to the team at Kaunas University of Technology for organizing this engaging conference and creating a welcoming space to present and discuss our work with colleagues from around the globe!