Dr. Machteld Simoens

Curriculum Vitae

Machteld Catharina Simoens is a social scientist and university lecturer with deep expertise in the complex dynamics of societal governance and sustainability transformation. She is well-versed in a variety of qualitative methods and embraces inter- and transdisciplinary approaches in her research. She holds a PhD from the University of Freiburg (Germany), where she studied the discursive elements and dynamics of socio-technical sustainability transitions, with a particular focus on the transition to a circular economy in the German packaging sector. During a postdoctoral position at the Social Transitions Research Group at the University of Basel (Switzerland), she worked on the analysis of transformative initiatives in the agri-food sector and on the development and intersection of social science methods in sustainability transformation research. In her current position as junior professor for “Governance of Socio-technical Transformation” at RWTH Aachen, Machteld focuses on systemic stability, conflict, and resistance as core dynamics of transformation processes and their governance.