# Anna Wieczorek

**Source**: https://www.tue.nl/en/research/researchers/anna-wieczorek
**Parent**: https://www.tue.nl/en/research/research-groups/innovation-sciences/technology-innovation-society

Full Professor

# Anna Wieczorek

- [Google Scholar](https://scholar.google.nl/citations?user=UHFTPqkAAAAJ&hl=en "Google Scholar")
- [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=AAIAAAlf7OwBM5zHsgku7reh3bGdMEzQocDHN2s&trk=nav_responsive_tab_profile_pic "LinkedIn")
- [Research Gate](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Anna_Wieczorek2 "ResearchGate")
- [PURE url](https://research.tue.nl/en/persons/anna-j-wieczorek/ "Research Portal")

##### Contact

[a.j.wieczorek@tue.nl](#)

[+31 40 247 2854](tel:+31402472854)

[Atlas 8.414](https://www.google.com/maps/dir/?api=1&destination=51.447343,5.486125)

##### Department / Institute

[Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences](https://www.tue.nl/en/our-university/departments/industrial-engineering-and-innovation-sciences)

[EIRES](https://www.tue.nl/en/research/research-groups/eires)

##### Group

[Technology, Innovation & Society](https://www.tue.nl/en/research/research-groups/innovation-sciences/technology-innovation-society)

EIRES Research

## Prizes & Grants

- [2020

  EU Citizens Award for Sustainable Energy Innovation

  Technology, Innovation & Society](https://research.tue.nl/en/prizes/08b53e1e-747a-4ee9-b272-d1bdcb453aae)
- [2016

  Best Teacher 1st year Bachelor Sustainable Innovation, 2016

  Technology, Innovation & Society](https://research.tue.nl/en/prizes/332aa503-2a91-489f-a1b6-9c8fe38db7e6)
- [2018

  Best Teacher Bachelor Sustainable Innovation, 2018

  Technology, Innovation & Society](https://research.tue.nl/en/prizes/52eca315-6eaf-4e39-9a3a-fc6b7b6b7b70)
- [2018

  Visiting professor at UFG Brazil, 2018

  Technology, Innovation & Society](https://research.tue.nl/en/prizes/178e9d64-ea7f-4fe1-ba30-e8cc379b540e)
- [2019

  Nominee Best Teacher at TU/e, 2019

  Technology, Innovation & Society](https://research.tue.nl/en/prizes/35cc941a-e37d-4e7a-90fa-68a3ed91bdf0)

[See all prizes & grants](https://research.tue.nl/en/persons/anna-j-wieczorek//prizes/)

## RESEARCH PROFILE

I am a sustainability transition scholar with over 25 years international experience. I contribute to theory development on: socio-technical system innovation, governance, sustainable development and innovation. I study novel ways of organising systems through new market models (e.g. P2P) and new institutional arrangements. In that work I unpack upscaling, experimentation by communities, co-creation and new business models. My empirical domains are (smart) energy and mobility, and I sympathise with cities’ agendas. I study renewables and new, multi-system technologies such as blockchain. The geographical scope of my work covers Europe and Global South (Asia, India, Thailand). I use transitions as my home discipline from where I take trans-disciplinary ‘detours’ to other fields.

Being driven by the urgent need to act on sustainability, I regularly engage with practical contexts and I aim to do research that matters. My research is funded by NWO, EU, APN, NRC, DFG and Dutch Ministries. Currently I am a project leader of a € 10,4M Interreg NWE project on Smart Community-Owned Renewable Energy (SmartCORE), a follow up of the €7,1M community-based Virtual Power Plant (cVPP). Both projects consider most effective ways to scale-up community energy initiatives. cVPP has won two prizes: the EU Citizens Award for Sustainable Energy Innovation and IE&IS Valorization Award. I also lead an NWO-funded ORAKLE project on organising learning and knowledge for energy transition in the Province of North Brabant.

From 2021 I have been appointed the TU/e Sustainability Ambassador.

I am a regular guest speaker, guest editor, reviewer and I publish in leading journals. From 2017 I am an Associate Editor of Urban Transformations journal.\
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PhD SUPERVISION\
\
Tanja Manders\
Brett Petzer\
Luc van Summeren\
Shelly Tsui\
Jasper van Dijk\
Amira El Faiz\
Laura van den Berghe\
Aakash Abraham

## ACADEMIC BACKGROUND

My background is in innovation sciences. As part of my PhD, I studied European renewable energy from the Technological Innovation System (TIS) perspective at Innovation Studies Group of Utrecht University. This work contributed to the conceptualisation of systemic innovation problems and instruments, and to the spatial expansion of the TIS framework.

In paralel I conducted research on sustainability transitions at the Institute for Environmental Studies at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (IVM-VU). My involvement with this field started in 1999 when I became an executive officer of the Industrial Transformation Science Project of the International Human Dimension Program (IHDP). Within that task, until 2011, I facilitated research on applying insights from the emerging stream of system innovation in the context of analyzing economic and environmental transitions occurring in developing Asia. This work facilitated translation of the novel, though very western, insights about systemic change to other socio-economic and geographical conditions. \
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Through this research I became a founding and Steering Group member of the Sustainability Transitions Research Network (STRN). In 2015 I established a Global South, and in 2018, a Brazilian chapter of the STRN. In 2010-2017, on behalf of STRN, I have co-developed and implemented a series of challende-based professional trainings for entrepreneurs in sustainability transitions for Climate KIC and InnoEnergy KIC.

## Empowering citizens and communities to drive a fair energy transition

World energy consumption is still heavily dependent on fossil fuels. Although a shift towards renewable energy is taking place, the pace is not fast enough to offset the impacts of worldwide economic expansion and a growing population, as the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned at the end of 2019. However, the need to speed up the energy transition also creates new opportunities. In an international research project led by Eindhoven University of Technology, scientists have developed a novel model of radical decarbonization based on the empowerment of low-carbon, community-driven energy initiatives: the community-based Virtual Power Plant (cVPP).

- [Read the cVPP research story](https://www.tue.nl/en/news-and-events/features/empowering-citizens-and-communities-to-drive-a-fair-energy-transition)

## Key Publications

- [See all publications](https://research.tue.nl/en/persons/anna-j-wieczorek//publications/)

- [### Community energy meets smart grids: Reviewing goals, structure, and roles in Virtual Power Plants in Ireland, Belgium and the Netherlands

  Energy Research and Social Science

  (2020)

  L.F.M. van Summeren,A.J. Wieczorek,Gunter Bombaerts,G.P.J. Verbong](https://research.tue.nl/nl/publications/20667408-a89a-4e81-83dd-3f0db86e339e)
- [### Complexity, tensions, and ambiguity of intermediation in a transition context: the case of Connecting Mobility

  Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions

  (2020)

  T.N. Manders,A.J. Wieczorek,G.P.J. Verbong](https://research.tue.nl/nl/publications/3ad3ec1a-5941-41e5-b4ad-5a2440a0587d)
- [### Cycling as a service assessed from a combined business-model and transitions perspective

  Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions

  (2020)

  B.J.M. Petzer,A.J. Wieczorek,G.P.J. Verbong](https://research.tue.nl/nl/publications/0f20948e-d7f0-45a3-a3b6-d90ed3eafcac)
- [### The promise of peer-to-peer trading? The potential impact of blockchain on the actor configuration in the Dutch electricity system

  Energy Research and Social Science

  (2019)

  M.C. Buth,A.J. Wieczorek,G.P.J. Verbong](https://research.tue.nl/nl/publications/752dc041-bec8-42fa-9a0e-9c336e73e243)
- [### The role of users in sustainable innovation

  (2019)

  G.P.J. Verbong,B. Verhees,A.J. Wieczorek](https://research.tue.nl/nl/publications/7c989861-e0c5-4fa2-95d5-82b031b47da3)

## Ancillary Activities

- research, Norwegian University of Science and Technology