The project  will focus on transformation processes in three areas of crucial relevance to sustainable development, relating in particular to pressing imperatives in countries of the Global South: energy systems, agriculture, and urban digital infrastructures.

Each implicates intricate North-South linkages that must be better understood for global sustainability efforts. Adopting a systematic comparative approach, GoST will use sociotechnical imaginaries as a conceptual tool to make sense of how collective imaginations of transformation have determined present conditions. Many challenges in the three focal areas are related to the prevailing imaginary, and solutions may require radically new imaginaries.

Through analysis of two interlinked parameters of transformation (dimensionality and temporality) across five nations (Germany, India, Kenya, UK, US), leading research centers in each will examine, in cooperation with key stakeholders, the differences between imagined and experienced states in each focal instance of transformation in each country. By rethinking transformation through these lenses, GoST presents a methodologically innovative, integrative, empirically grounded approach that goes beyond usual characterizations of transformation as a linear process of development.

The project will be implemented through a partnership between the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS), Program on Science, Technology and Society (STS) (Harvard Kennedy School), The Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ Leipzig), SPRU – Science Policy Research Unit (University of Sussex). ESG – Environment Support Group (Bangalore), UBA - German Environment Agency (Dessau-Rosslau).