Amelia Mutter

I am a researcher and teacher in environmental communication with an interdisciplinary background in environmental science and science and technology studies. I earned my PhD in Technology and Social Change from Linköping University where my thesis focused on future imaginaries of biogas and electric vehicles and the role that they plan in Sweden’s transition to a fossil fuel free future. My current research focuses on deliberative, participatory, and collaborative processes for urban and rural development. I am especially interested in the role dialogue practitioners play in sustainability dialogues, as well as how deliberative processes can be used to democratize imaginaries of the future. 

I am engaged in teaching as the coordinator for the course Project and Communication for the Agrarian Sector and through the master's program 'Environmental Communication and Management' where I am a teacher and examiner in the courses Conflict, Democracy, and Facilitation, and The Process of Research: Methods, Data Analysis and Academic Writing. I am also involved in the Masters' students thesis work as a supervisor and the leader of our departments section of the course Master's Thesis in Environmental Science.

I am involved in the following research projects which build on my interest in deliberative processes and collaboration: 

Collaboration, deliberation and participation in times of post-truth politics: the role of dialogue experts, finansed by Formas.

MISTRA Environmental Communication – reframing communication for sustainability, Finansed by Mistra (WP 1: Planning for sustainability transformations - government-led dialogue in natural resource governance) 

and A balancing act between swift and slow planning: reimagining deliberative planning in view of the urgency of sustainability challenges, finansed by Formas

My PhD is within Technology and Social Change from Linköping University where I worked for five years at the Institute for Thematic Studies. My research focused on the interactions between imaginaries of biogas and electric vehicles within the ongoing transport transition. During this time period, I also contributed to the department through teaching in Sustainable Development and History of Technology, as a member of the PhD Council, and as an editorial assistent for the journal Valuation Studies.

Calderon, C., Mutter, A., Westin, M., and Butler, A. (2022). Navigating swift and slow planning: planners' balancing act in the design of participatory processes. European Planning Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/09654313.2022.2156271

Mutter, A. and Rohracher, H. (2022). Competing Transport Futures: Tensions between Imaginaries of Electrification and Biogas Fuel in Sweden. Science, Technology, & Human Values 47 (1). 10.18261/issn.2703-8866-2021-02-02

Westin, M., Mutter, A., Calderon., C., and Hellquist, A. (2021). "Let us be led by the residents": Swedish dialogue experts' stories about power, justification and ambivalence. Nordic Journal of Urban Studies. https://doi.org/10.18261/issn.2703-8866-2021-02-02

Mutter, A. (2021). Embedding imaginaries - electric vehicles in Sweden's fossil fuel free future. Futures 129. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2021.102742

Mutter, A. (2020). Multiple Imaginaries of the Fossil Fuel Free Future: Biogas and Electricity in Swedish Urban Transport. PhD Diss. Linköping University 

Mutter, A. (2019). Obduracy and Change in Urban Transport - Understanding Competition Between Sustainable Fuels in Swedish Municipalities. Sustainability 11, 6092. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11216092

Mutter, A. (2019). Mobilizing sociotechnical imaginaires of fossil-free futures - Electricity and biogas in public transport in Linköping, Sweden. Energy Research & Social Science 49: 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2018.10.025