The research project Just Transform is funded by the Norwegian Research Council between January 2024 and December 2026.
The green transition is entangled with the digital transition, and working together these transitions produce new patterns in working life including new opportunities and new risks. We lack knowledge about how this will affect different demographic groups. Just Transform will fill this gap through investigating the levels of policy, organization, and individuals, mapping risks and opportunities for an inclusive labour market. Rather than incremental changes in separate systems, the approach taken in this project is that of a holistic transformation, marked by wider participation and enhanced equity in working life.
An Interdisciplinary Research Team
The team includes researchers from the Technology & Society and the Climate & Environment research groups at Vestlandsforsking (Western Norway Research Institute), from Norce Research Institute and from IfM Engage, which is part of the Institute for Manufacturing at University of Cambridge.
The interdisciplinary team will bridge three areas of policy/practice and research: the green transition, the digital transition, and feminist studies of transforming power structures and societal mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion. The interdisciplinary approach of the project combines research expertise in environmental justice, industrial sustainability, digitalization of working life, feminist theories and feminist technology studies, economic and policy analysis of industrial and innovation policies, and expertise on inclusive and holistic transformations.
Project leader is Hilde G. Corneliussen, Research Professor and Research leader for Technology and Society at Vestlandsforsking.
Project description
Norwegian economy and the labour market are undergoing a process of change to meet goals for a green transition. In many industries and sectors, digitalization is a central part of the solution.
How is the labour market affected when the green and the digital transition meet? Vestlandsforsking and Norce, with support from IfM Engage (UK) will study this in the project JustTransform. The study starts with exploring policy strategies at the global, European, and national levels to investigate how narratives of sustainability and inclusion contribute to visions of a desired future. The next part focuses on the practical and organizational level, examining how political narratives about a sustainable future are reflected among key stakeholders in a region with active engagement in the green transition.
Through labour market statistics, a survey, and interviews with business leaders and regional authorities, we examine how goals for the green and the digital transitions are translated into and affect practices in the region. In dialogue with educational institutions, we will investigate how the requirements and needs for skills and training related to the new green and digital economy are reflected and prepared for in the education sector. Finally, we will interview employees in companies to build knowledge about how individuals experience participation alongside competence and skill requirements in a labour market striving to meet the demands of the green and digital transitions.
Exploring individuals’ access to opportunities and experiences of risk will provide insights into how a broader set of social categories such as gender, age, ethnicity, social background, and education enable or hinder participation in the new green-digital labour market. In this way, we aim to fill today’s knowledge gaps regarding how different demographic groups are affected by new patterns in the labour market and develop recommendations for how to enhance just and equitable processes and outcomes.
