Knowing and doing differently: knowledge, planning and sustainable transformation

This research project is carried out by Rebecka Kjellström . 

My research revolves around questions of knowledge, planning, and change. I am interested in what counts as knowledge in planning contexts, how certain ways of knowing are given greater weight than others, and how this shapes what becomes possible to see, say, and do in work on transformative change towards sustainability.

The project takes an exploratory and iterative approach, in which recurring feedback with the practice partner, Region Stockholm, forms an important part of the research process. The research is therefore understood not as a linear process with a predetermined direction, but as a form of inquiry in which questions, concepts, and insights develop gradually through dialogue with empirical material, theory, and practice.

In the project, I examine how knowledge is not only used in planning, but also shaped, valued, and legitimized through models, supporting documents, meetings, and organizational ways of working. A particular focus is the tension between what can easily be formalized and turned into decision support, and those experiences, relationships, and insights that are also important but are often harder to make count.

The first part of the project consisted of an exploratory ethnographic field study in autumn 2025. For just over a month, I followed the work at the Transport Administration (Trafikförvaltningen, Region Stockholm), and the material generated through that study later formed the basis for the project’s first article. The article focuses on how complexity is handled in planning practice. By following concrete situations, it examines how uncertainties, contradictions, and overlapping logics are not only reduced, but are sometimes also allowed to emerge and be worked through, albeit temporarily and under certain conditions. The article forms part of the project’s broader interest in how planning is made possible in situations that cannot easily be ordered or understood through a unified logic.

As part of the project, I am also conducting a workshop series during the spring and autumn of 2026, using drama pedagogy and performative methods to explore roles, relationships, perspectives, and space for action in planning. Here, the performative process is used both as a way of investigating practice and as part of the project’s iterative way of working, where insights from one stage can be carried forward, tested, and reworked in the next.