dr. A.L.M. Rinscheid (Adrian)

Adrian is an Assistant Professor for Environmental Governance and Politics. The focal point of his research is to trace and explain societal forces for transformative change and forces of resistance. Adrian’s expertise covers energy, transport and agri-food systems. From macro to micro, his work includes 3 research streams:

1) Decline as part of transformations.
Advancing innovations is typically insufficient to displace unsustainable systems. Therefore, deliberate decline now plays an increasingly important role in transformation governance. Mobilizing concepts from transition studies and political economy, Adrian investigates the drivers, design and consequences of interventions targeting the decline of technologies, processes or practices.

2) Societal discourses.
Adrian examines the evolution of societal debates about technologies & policies over time. Discourse provides the arena in which the legitimacy of the status quo and alternatives are constructed and deconstructed. Adrian investigates discourses surrounding innovations (wind energy, meat substitutes) and declining technologies (coal, nuclear power) and their governance implications.

3) Perceptions & cognition.
Inspired by research on pol. behavior, cognition and decision-making, Adrian investigates how communication shapes how citizens’ think about climate change and policies. He also studies how climate policies are perceived to aggravate socio-economic inequality and how citizens assess the distributional impacts of climate change. This stream links Adrian’s interest in sustainable behavior with broader themes in welfare state research.

Adrian values his roots as a political scientist, but also appreciates the opportunity to combine the complementary strengths of different disciplines in interdisciplinary projects. Previously, he was a Guest Researcher at the U. of Konstanz (GER 2021-2022), a Post-Doc at the U. of St.Gallen (CH 2019-2022), and a Visiting Researcher at Princeton U. (USA 2018).