Hanna Eggestrand Vaughan

Hanna Eggestrand Vaughan is a doctoral student in Planning and Decision Analysis at the Department of Urban Planning and Environment, Division of Urban and Regional Studies (URS). She also holds a position as university lecturer in sustainability strategies at the Department of Sustainable Development, Environmental Science and Engineering (SEED), from which she is currently on leave.

Researching and teaching critical perspectives on sustainability

Hanna’s research and teaching adopts critical perspectives on sustainability and draws on ecological systems thinking in exploring possibilities for just societies within the planetary boundaries. Her particular focus lies in how we make sense of and (re-)enact the world through everyday practices as well as through policy and planning, and she explores these as nested arenas for change.

Doctoral student

Values in practice: Framing policy and planning for sustainable consumption (Funded by Formas)

Hanna’s PhD study understands values as material-discursive practices, integral to discourse and manifested at different levels of society (cascading down and emerging upwards in reciprocal processes). Yielding notions of propriety and system intentionality, futures seem more likely to unfold in some directions rather than others depending on what values are foregrounded.

Importantly, Hanna’s study departs from the assumptions that intrinsic values are critical for strong sustainability but are presently overshadowed by extrinsic values, underpinning and perpetuating contemporary resource and emission intense consumer culture. By this recognition, she explores how policy and planning, being shaped by and in turn shaping value orientations, may foreground and forward intrinsic values to support deep sustainability transformations.

Practically, Hanna is analysing national policy documents on sustainable consumption as well as studying the City of Gothenburg’s work with sustainable lifestyles. Together with representatives from the Swedish Transition Network (Swe: Omställningsnätverket), she has also organised a workshop series in which participants working with sustainable consumption explored possibilities to strengthen intrinsic values by means of their organisations.

Hanna is also active within the research programme Mistra Sustainable Consumption - From niche to mainstream where she has contributed to various publications, including on enablers for sustainable consumption.

Supervisors are Pernilla Hagbert and Karin Bradley.

Lecturer (universitetsadjunkt) (on leave)

Industrial ecology and strategies for sustainable development.

Hanna works with various sustainable development related courses at undergraduate and graduate level, primarily in the energy and environmental engineering programme and the master's programme in sustainable technology. She also contributes towards the continued development of these programmes.