about DRIFT
DRIFT (Dutch Research Institute for Transitions) is involved in several EU FP projects dealing with SI issues (such as TRANSIT – Transformative Social Innovation Theory; SIC-The Social Innovation Community) and has special knowledge in the field of energy transition and social innovation (SONNET-Social Innovations in energy transitions; JustWind4All-Just and effective governance for accelerating wind energy).
team members
Sien Beckers
Sien Beckers is an advisor and researcher at the Dutch Research Institute for Transitions (DRIFT), specialized in social inequalities. With a background in economics and sociology, she focuses on the social domain and has particularly been active in topics such as educational disparities, poverty and welfare systems. Her work bridges policy, practice, and research to co-create systemic solutions with diverse stakeholders. Before DRIFT, she coordinated and led a student association that focusses on social entrepreneurship and innovation.
Within the SI-Mission Facility, Sien will be involved in WP1, creating impact pathways for integrating social innovation, WP3 focused on building an SI investment lab and WP4 where we work on the future research agenda and ecosystem. Sien is also involved in the dissimination phase linked to WP5.
Tessa Speelman
Tessa Speelman works as a researcher and adviser at the Dutch Research Institute for Transitions (DRIFT). In her work, she focuses on facilitating collaboration and co-creation between diverse stakeholders. She explores new forms of governance that can support systemic change, and contribute to transitions toward a sustainable and just future. A central theme in her work is moving beyond purely technological solutions by addressing the social, institutional, and cultural dimensions of change.
She is currently involved in several projects, among other things, focussing on a sustainable and just education system, from early childhood education to lifelong learning; learning and monitoring of transition-experiments and working with diverse stakeholders on the implications of the mobility transition in rural areas.
Within the SI-Mission Facility Tessa will work on Work Package 1, creating impact pathways for integrating social innovation and Work Package 2 the training and scaling lab for social innovators across Europe.
Emilinah Namaganda
Emilinah Namaganda is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Dutch Research Institute for Transitions (DRIFT). Her work focuses on the social dimensions of sustainability transitions.
She is currently involved in several projects including: one that develops an analytical framework to understand and assess clean industrial transitions in Europe; another that examines youth conceptualization of intergenerational justice; and a third that explores mechanisms to better integrate marginalized, place-based knowledge into global climate policies.
Within the SI-Mission Facility, she leads Work Package 1, which aims to develop impact pathways for integrating social innovation into the EU Missions.
Julia Wittmayer
Julia Wittmayer works as Professor Transdisciplinarity and Societal Transformations at the Erasmus School of Philosophy and as senior researcher at DRIFT, Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her work focuses on social innovations and their governance in the context of just sustainability transitions in urban areas and energy systems. To support the development of knowledge and action that address societal challenges, she develops and implements a variety of collaborative action-oriented research formats. More recent work analyses the academic context and the roles of universities in and for just sustainability transitions.
Within the SI-Mission Facility, Julia explores the role of social innovation for mission-oriented policy in WP1 and contributes to the research agenda in WP4.
The SI-Mission-Facility is funded by the European
Commission (EC) through the Horizon Europe Programme
with Grant Agreement 101216478.
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