Ivanov, Martin | Bulgaria

Fellow at IAS-STS: 2016/2017

Martin J. Ivanov was born in 1974 in Ruse (Bulgaria). He graduated in Political science at Johann Wolfgang von Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. Since 2007, he has worked in the field of non-formal education at the International Elias Canetti Society, Ruse. Since 2011, he is chairman of the Federation of Social Associations in Bulgaria. In 2013, he obtained his PhD in sociology at the Institute for the Study of Societies and Knowledge (ISSK), BAS, for his dissertation on Green energy developments in Bulgaria. He is currently senior assistant professor at the ISSK-BAS. His interests are in the field of energy industry, environmental technologies and innovations, entrepreneurship, non-formal education, and the social policy of the Church.

Project at IAS-STS: The development of the Bulgarian energy system 1900-2016: path dependencies, (dis-)continuities and possible pathways to low-carbon future

This study will build on the author’s recent research on the development of renewable energies in Bulgaria and further elaborate the Bulgarian case and its energy system development from the very beginning with the aim to better understand and reconstruct its genesis, contingencies, path dependencies and (dis-)continuities on the background of the general decline and disintegration of the Bulgarian electricity supply system over the past 30 years and recent financial crisis of the National electricity company. Thus the proposed research will have a clear practical objective for the further development and ecological modernization of the Bulgarian energy system: on the one hand it will follow consistent path-dependent way of socio-technical transition as clear visible in the case of renewable energies development in Bulgaria in the past decade (2006-2016) with the introduction of mainly mid- and large-scale wind turbines and solar panels parks, thus at the end, they become not surprisingly a system-preserving technologies, and on the other, based on the political decision three years ago to stop all investments in RES by cutting down the preferential support schemes for wind energy and photovoltaics it could be a window of opportunity to develop a new way by building new alliances of energy companies, equipment manufacturers and end-users (Kaijser et.al., 1991), thus strengthening “niches” innovations (Geels, 2002).

Selected Publications

Action Research in Higher Education through Backward Designing of Ecopreneurship Trainings (as Co-Author) Special Issue 2016, pp. 134-151

Renewable Energy Industry in Bulgaria: Challenges to Its Development, Sociological Problems, Special Issue 2014, pp. 151-171

Bulgarien: Die Kraft und der Widerstand des Stroms Sozio-technische sowie techno-politische Spannungen bei der Einführung von erneuerbaren Energien in Bulgarien am Beispiel der Windenergie und der Photovoltaik, Südosteuropa Mitteilungen, 05-06, München 2012 (as Co-Author)

The Influence of EU on the development of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) in Bulgaria, Scientific works of University of Ruse. 2012 Vol.51, Series 5.2.pp. 99-105. (in Bulgarian)

Politische Bildung und politische Partizipation. Praxis politische Bildung Heft 3, Bonn, 2009, S. 190-194