Dr. Ida Nilstad Pettersen

Ida Nilstad Pettersen is a professor of design for sustainability transitions at the Department of Design, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). She earned a PhD in design for sustainability and works on design, nature relations, social practices, and societal transitions and transformations. Pettersen addresses these topics in teaching, supervision, and research, including interdisciplinary and cross-sector national and European projects. Over the last years, her focus has been on urban nature, consumption reduction, and transformation of systems of production and consumption.

Pettersen’s current research revolves around nature relations in everyday life, in work on design, and sustainability transitions. She is interested in how relational perspectives and approaches can contribute to reconceptualizing, reimagining, and transforming such relationships. Design holds a paradoxical position as central to currently dominant and unsustainable systems of production and consumption but also as a potential contributor to transformative change. Pettersen engages in further developing research in this area, focusing on human-nature relations, drawing on design, STS, and the environmental humanities.

RCC Research Project: Practice-Nature Relations in Design for Transitions and Transformations

Selected Publications:

• with Ferne Edwards. “Speculative Design for Envisioning More-than-Human Futures in Desirable Counter-Cities.” Cities 142 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2023.104553.
• with Ferne Edwards, and Lucia Alexandra Popartan, eds. Urban Natures: Living the More-than-Human City. Berghahn Books, 2023.
• with Hanne Cecilie Geirbo. “‘There’s a Strong, Green Wind Blowing’. Drawing the Politics of Street Trees in Practice.” In Urban Natures: Living the More-than-Human City, edited by Ferne Edwards, Lucia Alexandra Popartan, and Ida Nilstad Pettersen. Berghahn Books, 2023.
• with Isaac Arturo Ortega Alvarado, and Thomas Berker. “Contesting Consumerism with a Circular Economy?” Circular Economy and Sustainability 3 (2023): 1623–47. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43615-022-00218-1.
• with Isaac Arturo Ortega Alvarado, Thomas Edward Sutcliffe, and Thomas Berker. “Emerging Circular Economies: Discourse Coalitions in a Norwegian Case.” Sustainable Production and Consumption 26 (2021): 360–72. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.spc.2020.10.011.
• “Fostering Absolute Reductions in Resource Use: The Potential Role and Feasibility of Practice-Oriented Design.” Journal of Cleaner Production 132 (2016): 252–65. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2015.02.005.