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This paper engages with social justice in engineering education based on pedagogical tools aimed at improving analytical reading, writing and critical reflection in course activities. The authors conceptualizes analytical thinking, critical reflection, and web-based peer review as tools for transformation of student learning, and apply these tools as instructions to engineering students studying city planning in Stockholm, Sweden. Students were asked to use the tools to critically analyze the role of national identities, social vis-à-vis technological engineering, and what politics have shaped Swedish society. In studying these aspects of city planning, the authors argue for a shift in attention toward the practices of engineers' work around issues of social justice, an argument reinforced by the results of textual analysis of student essay reflections on social justice in city planning. The results are a wide range of themes of critical reflection made by students arising from course activities. These included balancing social and environmental justice, like suburban segregation, planning ideals and, in some cases, challenges for the planning profession. We argue that these are valuable lessons for engineers, which can be achieved by combining practical experiences of planning practices with tools for advancing critical and analytical skills of engineering students. By analyzing engineering students' views on solutions and challenges of addressing social justice in practice, we can improve our understanding of the engineering skills required to work with social justice. In this way, the study complements discussion and critiques of the relationships between society and engineering outlined in the rhetoric of engineering grand challenges, and contributes by discussing new roles for engineers in facing day-to-day challenges working with social justice.

This paper engages with how engineering education in Sweden have been retooled towards literacy in social justice. To achieve this, the authors used a set of pedagogical tools aimed at analytical thinking, critical reflection, and peer-review by students. The students were asked to use the tools in the course to critically analyze social justice in the city planning of twentieth century Stockholm, Sweden. This included, for example, national identities, social engineering, and politics that shaped Swedish society. The authors conducted a textual analysis of student essays on social justice that indicate increased social justice literacy and a shift towards the practices of engineers' work with city planning. The study concludes by discussing conditions for engineering students to gain familiarity with formats used for critical reflection within the humanities. ; QC 20180327

Innovation processes involve diverse sets of organizations including universities, private firms, corporate research labs and public research institutes. Collaborative forms of knowledge production and innovative activity enable actors to reduce risk, specialize, and take advantage of knowledge internal and external to the own organization. This paper discusses interactions and collaborations between public and private sector innovation. This is done through an analysis of semi-public research institutes in Sweden and their roles as arenas for R&D processes involving industry, university and government in terms of funding, research and public-private innovation. Particular attention is paid to technological niches of research institutes and utilization of research findings from collaborative R&D. The results show that institutes occupy specific niches which influence their ways of transferring knowledge. It is argued that diversity among R&D performers as well as funding opportunities is paramount for innovation systems to thrive. ; Original Publication: Dzamila Bienkowska, Katarina Larsen and Sverker Sörlin, Public-private innovation: Mediating roles and ICT niches of industrial research institutes, 2010, Innovation: Management, Policy & Practice, (12), 2, 206-216. http://dx.doi.org/10.5172/impp.12.2.206 Copyright: e-Content Management / eContent Management Pty Ltd., http://www.e-contentmanagement.com/

In this research design challenge, we focus on the 'how' question of transdisciplinary study of energy systems and futures, taking into consideration the challenges of control. However, as Stirling (2014) reminds us, deterministic pictures of control can be problematic. Rather, our overarching aim here is to contribute to the emerging literature on energy research and social science by grounding it with contributions from three distinct perspectives (organization studies, political ecology and societal metabolism). We identify some opportunities for mending the gap between qualitative and quantitative approaches to energy research and suggest potential entry points to unpack energy decisions and their consequences, both expected and unexpected. We first start with a presentation of multiple epistemologies on energy and reflect on the multiplicity of knowledge. Then we move on to reflect on different ways of approaching energy questions including a specific focus on embracing the inherent complexity in societally relevant energy research. In the penultimate section, we turn to questions of power, scale and space. We conclude with some bottlenecks and opportunities for a truly transdisciplinary energy research that is societally relevant, just, equitable, sustainable and useful at once. ; QC 20180411