Dundee Just Transition Hub

Tay Bridge on a sunny day with sandy shore nearby

The Just Transition Hub promotes interdisciplinary research, teaching and scholarship on issues related to just transition to a lower carbon economy. Bringing together the academic and non-academic communities, the Hub enables the development of alternative epistemologies and methodological approaches to inform research, teaching and practices on just transition.

Why have a just transition hub?

One of the greatest challenges of our time is how society develops a low-carbon economy. Our world is at risk of runaway climate change and for many there is a climate emergency. The solution is to develop low-carbon economies around the world. However, these must happen in a ‘just’ way where equity, equality, fairness, and inclusiveness are features of this transition.

In this context, Governments around the world are bringing in policy on the just transition. Here in the UK that is happening, more locally in Scotland where a national Just Transition Commission has been established. Further the British Academy has declared that a just transition is vital to society and is actively promoting research on the issue with ambitious plans for research growth in the area.

Despite all this increasing attention that the topic of just transition receives, despite the wakening of politicians to the topic, despite the increasing literature, there is a lack of proper attention to the need of new interdisciplinary, epistemological, and methodological approaches for both research and education for just transition. The lack of attention to the need for new approaches impact on the potential of the research and teaching on the topic. To an extent, this derives from the fact that too many scholars from outside of the energy community have not realized the importance of the topic for their own research, and that teachers have not realized the importance of incorporating the topic to pedagogical resources.

The Hub aims at increasing critical mass about the topic and, what is more, at answering this extremely important question: Which new research and teaching approaches are needed to respond to the ubiquity of just transition?

Main activities

The Just Transition Hub organises and hosts the following activities

  • Interdisciplinary Conferences and Seminars on Just Transition, which bring speakers from within and outside of the academia, from across the globe, to discuss new methodological approaches and topics of relevance to increase critical mass and inform transformative practices.
  • TERRAE Workshops, which bring civil society and academics to debate specific problems within the theme of just transition to a lower carbon economy.
  • Education for Just Transition, which is an ongoing research project with the objective of thinking and developing pedagogies for just transition.

Coming events

Along with the Congress of Nations and States (CNS) and the University of Stirling, the Dundee Just Transition Hub is hosting an interdisciplinary conference “Mass Atrocities, Environmental Degradation, and Communities’ Rights”, which will take place from 18-21 May 2026 in Dundee, Scotland. The event will be integrated into the biennial CNS Assembly which will bring together indigenous and minority communities from all over the world to discuss issues relating to mass atrocities, environmental degradation and communities’ rights.

Theme of the conference, including but not limited to:

  • Mass atrocities: prevention; perpetration and impunity; intersections with environmental degradation; intersections with climate change; trauma, grief, and memory; Reparations, mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage
  • Indigenous peoples and minority groups: self-determination; indigenous and traditional knowledges and alternative futures; indigenous and traditional responses to atrocities, environmental degradation and climate change; transitions to net zero including for example, energy transitions, transitions to circular economies, transitions in food production and farming, transition in transports and in the built environment
  • Reparations, mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage; the meanings of clean energy; the different meanings of just transitions
  • Environmental degradation: environmental violations; ecocide; traditional ecological knowledge; ecological, environmental, climate and social justice: synergies and clashes; water protection, water policies and water rights; free, prior and informed consent; rights of nature

Registration is open till 1 May on the conference website

Past events

The 2021 Symposium on ‘New Approaches to Just Transition’ was organized by the Dundee Just Transition Hub via live webcast on 25th June 2021. The symposium brought together over 20 panellists and 200 attendees from different parts of the world and from different backgrounds ranging from academia, NGOs, and UN agencies. See the report here.

Conference on Just Transition, Security, and the Law. May 18-19, 2023. Dundee. Registration opens 10 March 2023. Find out more about the conference.

Want to learn more about just transition?

The following papers will help you understand the main aspects of the academic debate about just transition:

  • Droubi, S., Malcolm, Z., Carvalho, E., Fernandes, F. L., Mckie, B., Wasim, S., Hutchison, N., & Pearson, L. (2025). Just transition for women in marginalised communities: Report of the workshop with women from the Tayside. University of Dundee. https://doi.org/10.20933/100001477
  • Droubi, S., Malcolm, Z., Carvalho, E., Fernandes, F. L., Mckie, B., Wasim, S., Hutchison, N., & Pearson, L. (2025). Just transitions for women in marginalised communities. Poster session presented at Tackling the Climate Emergency, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
  • Droubi, S., Carvalho, E., Fernandes, F. L., Wasim, S., Mckie, B., & Ogilvie, G. (2025). What does the just transition mean to you?. Digital or Visual Products, University of Dundee. What does the just transition mean to you?
  • Stewart, C., MacNeil, I., Jokubauskaite, G., Pavlou, V., Williams, R., Droubi, S., Chałaczkiewicz-Ładna, K., & Shapovalova, D. (2024). Situating Just Transition as a distinct legal concept. Social Science Research Network. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4950702
  • Droubi, S., Fernandes, F. L., Birch, R., Herath Mudiyanselage, K., Lelei, R. C., & Nogueira de Souza, N. C. (2023). Sustainable citizen decision-making: Impact of the cost-of-living crisis on the energy and circular economy transitions in urban Scotland . Just Transition Hub. https://doi.org/10.20933/100001298
  • Droubi, S., Galamba, A., Fernandes, F. L., de Mendonça, A. A., & Heffron, R. J. (2023). Transforming education for the just transition. Energy Research and Social Science, 100, Article 103090. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2023.103090

Team

Directors

Associates

Researchers

  • Ruth Lelei
  • Naiara C N de Souza

Partners

STEM Education Hub

Institute Maria and João Aleixo

International Investment in Latin America Network