Thomas SJ Smith Editor

Lewis Akenji is Executive Director of the Hot or Cool Institute in Berlin, a public-interest think tank that explores the intersection between society and sustainability. Lewis has served as Executive Director of SEED, founded as a United Nations partnership to promote entrepreneurship for sustainable development. He has consulted with multilateral institutions including the UN, the Asian and African Development Banks, the European Commission, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and has served as technical or policy adviser to several national governments. He serves on several boards and international committees, including as a Full Member of the Club of Rome, Commissioner on the Transformational Economics Commission of Earth4All.

Philip J. Vergragt is a climate activist, Professor Emeritus of Technology Assessment at TU Delft, Netherlands; and a Research Professor at Clark University, USA. He is one of the co-founders and a current Board member of SCORAI. He co-chairs the Electric Vehicles Task Force and is an advisory member of the Energy Commission at Newton, MA. His current research interests are sustainable consumption, sustainable cities, and systemic change. He is the (co)author of more than 100 scientific publications and five books.

Halina Szejnwald Brown is Professor Emerita of Environmental Science and Policy at Clark University. Her recent academic research has focused on the interface between culture, technology and policy in facilitating a transition beyond the current consumer society. She is a co-founder and board member of Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative and chairs Citizens Commission on Energy in her home city of Newton, Massachusetts. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, fellow of International Society for Risk Analysis, and fellow of Tellus Institute in Boston. Brown holds a doctoral degree in chemistry from New York University.

Thomas S.J. Smith is a researcher, writer, and editor based in the north of Spain. He received his PhD in Geography and Sustainable Development at the University of St Andrews, and has since held numerous roles including postdoctoral researcher in Environmental Studies at Masaryk University, Brno, and Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow in Geography at Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU), Munich. He is a member of the Community Economies Institute (CEI) and on the board of the Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative (SCORAI). His research interests relate to social ecological transformations, economic localization, and degrowth.

Laura Maria Wallnoefer is a Postdoctoral Research and Teaching Associate at the Institute of Marketing and Innovation, Department of Economics and Social Sciences at BOKU University. She has an interdisciplinary background in Energy and Transport Management and Sustainable Development and did her PhD on the Integration of Perspectives and Concepts about Individual’s as Change Agents at the Doctoral School for Transitions to Sustainability at the BOKU University. Her current research focuses on the intersections of different transition actors’ influence spheres, and how the multi-actor process required for a sustainable transformation can be better coordinated if those intersections are known.