Former members

Iline Ceelen (November 2022 – March 2023)

Iline Ceelen was research assistant for the UNMAKING programme’s, where she focused on knowledge valorization and societal impact. In addition to two MSc degrees in Sociology and Public Health, respectively, she has a bachelor’s degree in Midwifery Science. Her previous research focused on the tension fields surrounding the Amsterdam Pride Parade and the analysis of prevention programs of conflict-related sexual violence. Iline worked for Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières – MSF) in various professional roles and assignments from 2013 to 2021.

Olga Coretcaia (November 2018 – March 2020)

Olga Coretcaia was a Research Assistant on the NWO-funded VIDI project within this programme. She graduated in 2018 from the Master’s in Sustainability Science and Policy at Maastricht University, with a thesis on the Economy for the Common Good as a case of a social movement organization that can destabilize regimes in sustainability transitions.

Visiting researchers

Alessandra Piccoli (January 2024)

Alessandra Piccoli is postdoctoral researcher at the Free University of Bozen/Bolzano, Italy. where she works on rural sociology, particularly in the area of food networks and agroecology from a social and community-building perspective around agriculture. Her research is informed by participatory and transformative action research approaches. Alessandra is also a food activist and the co-author (with A. Rossi) of ‘Riprendiamoci il cibo! Sovranità e democrazia alimentare: la ricerca di diversità dal seme alla tavola‘(2023, Altreconomia Edizioni).

Sabrina Chakori (September 2023)

Sabrina Chakori is postdoctoral fellow at CSIRO, Australia. Her postdoctoral research focuses on the complex social-economic-ecological interaction that can influence socially just and ecologically sustainable transitions in Australia. Sabrina works in the Navigating Sustainability Transitions team (Valuing Sustainability, Future Science Platform, CSIRO). Her research adopts transdisciplinary science and systems methods to analyse, from a cross-scale perspective, social innovation and exnovation dynamics in postgrowth food systems transitions. Sabrina is also a multi-award social entrepreneur. in 2017 she founded the Brisbane Tool Library, a social enterprise that encourages people to borrow tools, camping gear & other equipment. This community-driven circular economy model reduces productivism & consumerism. The Brisbane Tool Library has been Australia’s first & only ‘library of things’ to be located within a public library (the State Library of Queensland).

Felipe Corral Montoya (May-June 2023)

Felipe Corral Montoya is a Research Associate and PhD candidate at the Technical University of Berlin, Germany. His research interests include structural change in coal regions, governance of raw material extraction and climate and energy policy, especially in the Global South. His particular focus is on the political economy of extractivism.

Philipp Degens (May-June 2023)

Dr Philipp Degens is Research Associate at the Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies “Futures of Sustainability”, University of Hamburg, Germany. His academic expertise spans cooperatives, civil society and third sector economics and the debates and options for societal transformation and sustainability.

Leonard Frank (October-December 2021 and October-November 2022)

Leonard Frank is a PhD candidate and researcher in Environmental Governance at the University of Freiburg, Germany. His interest lies with the conditions and strategies of policy interventions for sustainability transitions in different sectors, especially agriculture. Leonard looks at the deliberate destabilisation of unsustainable socio-technical regimes in agricultural production, analysing the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy. Leonard holds an MSc in Nature, Society and Environmental Governance from the University of Oxford and an M.A. in political science from Freie Universität Berlin. Before embarking on the PhD journey, he worked as an environmental policy researcher and consultant in Berlin.

Alessandro Passaro (January-April 2020)

Alessandro Passaro is PhD Candidate in Development Economics and Local Systems (DELoS) at the Universities of Trento and Florence (Italy). Alessandro looks at how eco-regions (bio-districts) and Food Policy Councils can be seen as spaces where business models, meanings and social relations are recreated for sustainability transitions to happen. He has an M.Sc. in International Management from Bocconi University in Milan and a Master’s Diploma in Environmental Management from the University of Padua. Before entering the PhD programme, he worked as a strategy consultant in Germany, supply chain manager in Denmark, and software consultant in Sweden.