Democracy, Activism and Social Transformation

INSPIRE

Representative democracy is undergoing a deep crisis of legitimacy. Climate assemblies, participatory budgeting, and civic tech are examples of democratic innovations that connect the voices of everyday people to decision-makers (Smith 2009; Geißel and Newton 2012; Elstub and Escobar 2019). On the one hand, these participatory and deliberative democracy (PDD) processes are celebrated for their potential in addressing political distrust and polarisation by deepening public engagement. On the other hand, they are accused of being cosmetic solutions to deep-seated problems that continue to exclude already disempowered groups (along socioeconomic, gender, racial, physical, and mental ability lines).

INSPIRE sets out to tackle these issues and failures by creating participatory spaces that are: inclusive, starting from the needs and assets of marginalised groups; resilient to changes in government and developing upon existing grassroots work to support community resilience; and adaptively embedded within the wider public sphere and in productive relationships with policymaking institutions.

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ACCEPT

The Core of the ACCEPT project is the concept of “energy communities” with the collective approach to bring citizens, local businesses and organizations together, to produce and consume locally generated, renewable energy. The EU-funded project intends to develop and deliver a digital toolbox, that allows such energy communities to offer innovative digital services to reduce the dependency on fossil fuels, save energy in the users households and thus be able to reduce their electricity bill without compromising the quality of living, but ideally increasing the comfort in their homes through smart devices. In ACCEPT, these developed tools will be demonstrated and validated in four pilot sites in Greece, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland involving more than 3.000 people and 750 residences.

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Deep Societal Innovation for Sustainability and Human Flourishing

The accelerating impacts of climate change, allied to the challenges of meeting 2030 goals (and beyond), has stirred a sense of urgency for policy responses and societal and behavioural changes needed to embark upon the structural transformations required to tackle pressing global challenges. DSIS seeks to develop a methodological basis for conceptualising the deep whole of society transformation required to engage on a trajectory towards authentic sustainability and human flourishing, which can create narratives for deep, rapid, whole of society transformation, and employ those narratives to inform policy making and public discourse on climate change and sustainability. DSIS is an inter- and transdisciplinary, inter-institutional, and international initiative, anchored at, and emanating from a well-developed research base in this area at UCC, and includes researchers and academics from MaREI and ISS21.

• PI: Professor Edmond Byrne (School of Engineering and Architecture and the Environmental Research Institute/MaREI) 
• Project Co-Leads: Professor Maggie O’Neill (Department of Sociology and Criminology and ISS21), Dr Ian Hughes (Environmental Research Institute/MaREI)
• Funder: EPA
• Project dates: 2024-2028