Mark Wiering focuses on a theme that has fascinated him throughout his entire working life: How can we meaningfully work towards social and political change on the road to a sustainable society? Why are there sometimes clear accelerations in society and policy – think of the energy transition in the Netherlands - and changes elsewhere proceed excruciatingly slowly (take fertiliser policy and nitrogen)? He considers both the processes of stability and change. Sometimes stability in policy is good, sometimes it is inertia. In his research, he wants to look at the conditions for structural sustainability changes in our society and in policy.
“Under what conditions do we change? Is there always a need for a deep crisis or “shock event”? Is it about the people and their story (innovative citizens, politicians, policy entrepreneurs)? The viability of the alternatives? The social mobilisation of the change? Or all of these conditions together? A meaningful theory of sustainability transformations requires a broader view of sociopolitical change.”
About Mark Wiering
Mark Wiering (Gemert, North Brabant, 1964) studied Political Science at the University of Amsterdam, where he graduated in 1992. He continued his academic career at Radboud University, where he started his PhD in sociology of law. With his dissertation ‘Enforcement Officers in Context, manure legislation in the Netherlands and Flanders’, Wiering researched the enforcement style of the manure Enforcement Officers in the Netherlands and Flanders, with which he obtained his PhD in 1998. This dissertation was also nominated for the Van Poelje Prize for the best dissertation in the field of administration and policy issues in 1999.
After completing his dissertation, Mark Wiering continued as a junior lecturer at Utrecht University and returned to Nijmegen at the end of 2000 to join the Environment and Policy group. He (co-)directed various international comparative studies on transboundary water management, water quality management, flood risks and climate adaptation. In 2011 he was appointed associate professor of Environmental Governance and Politics. In 2014 he and the team for Planning and Environment were awarded the internationalisation prize for the Erasmus Mundus programme ‘Planet-Europe’, a collaboration with universities in Wales and Sweden. Since 2015, he has been co-designer and coordinator of the master's programme in Environment and Society Studies. In recent years, he has also been working on research into the role of citizens in the energy transition, both in the Netherlands and in a comparative international perspective.
In addition to his university positions, Mark Wiering is also a member of the Commissie Deskundigen Meststoffenwet, in which he advises the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security, Fisheries and Nature on fertiliser policy. He is also a member of the editorial board of Sustainability Café Nijmegen for the Municipality of Nijmegen and Lux.