Social Innovation and Sustainable Consumption (PDF)

Sylvia Lorek holds a PhD in consumer economics and is trained to work on the interlinkages of the individual micro-economic and the societal macroeconomic perspective in which the scientific and societal discourses about sustainable consumption take place. As head of SERI Germany e.V., she is working on studies and as consultant for national and international organisations. She has a lecturer position at the University of Applied Science in Münster and held classes e.g. at the University of Helsinki, the Baltic University Program (BUP) and the Asia-Europe Foundation University. Sylvia is an organising member of SCORAI Europe, the Global Research Forum on Sustainable Consumption and Production (GRF-SCP), the Society for the European Roundtable on Sustainable Consumption and Production (ERSCP).

Edina Vadovics (M.Sc., M.Ed., M.Phil.) is research director of GreenDependent Institute and president of GreenDependent Association in Hungary, both with the mission to promote and research sustainable lifestyles, focusing on facilitating dialogue between research and practice. Edina manages GreenDependent's work in international research projects, and campaigns. While her research focuses on sustainable communities and lifestyles, she is also involved in action projects. Earlier, she worked in corporate sustainability management, and taught related courses at various universities. She also worked as an external expert to the European Environment Agency and UNEP, and contributed to some of their key publications. She is member of the advisory board of the TRANsformative Social Innovation Theory research project, and an expert in the URBACT Capitalization project on social innovation in cities. Edina is a member of the SCORAI Europe steering committee, and has contributed to several SCORAI workshops and co-organized SCORAI special sessions at conferences.

Julia M. Wittmayer, PhD, works as senior researcher at DRIFT, the Dutch Research Institute for Transitions at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. She holds an MSc in Social and Cultural Anthropology (cum laude) and her research focuses on social innovation and social sustainability in urban areas and on local scale. Her research interest is in roles, social relations and interactions of actors involved in transition (management) processes and initiatives, with a specific interest for the role of research and transdisciplinary engagements. She also lectures at DRIFT's Transition Academy, leading the theme 'Transformative Research'.