Pataki, György | Hungary

György Pataki has a master in economics, specialised in environmental economics and management and public policy. He pursued his doctoral studies in management and organisation studies and gained his PhD in 2003. His main research areas cover multiple sustainability issues ranging from biodiversity, ecosystem services, nature conservation to transformative social innovation, social entrepreneurship, and community economy. He is committed to co-creative and responsible research approaches, incl. participatory action research. He is co-teaching a project-based elective master on social entrepreneurship and social economy and responsible for qualitative research methodology training of doctoral students at the Doctoral School of Business and Management, Corvinus Business School. He is board member of the European Society for Ecological Economics and handling editor for Conservation Biology.

Projekt at IAS-STS: Transforming Food, Transforming Lives: Theory of Change in the Transition Town Movement

My research project aims to learn more about the everyday practices of the Transition Town Movement, in the Austrian and Hungarian context, by working with and for them in putting into practice a more sustainable living on Planet Earth. My practical research goal is to demonstrate the possibility for research to contribute to a sustainability transformation relevant to daily living practices through a cooperative and responsible approach. My intellectual research goal is to gain a better understanding of the theory of change underlying the activities and practices of the Transition Town Movement. More specifically, I would like to better understand the ongoing sustainability transformation in the food system from the point of view of Transition Town Movement and, theoretically, from the perspective of social innovation. My research design will follow an explorative-interpretive approach towards Transition Graz as a case for transformative social innovation. Since I have been studying for years Transition Wekerle, the empirical research targeting Transition Graz, on the one hand, will serve to explore and understand this Austrian case of the global Transition Town Movement and, on the other hand, will assist in a better understanding of Transition Wekerle by reaping the theoretical benefits a comparative perspective may provide.

Selected Publications

Bodorkós, B and Pataki, G (2009): Local communities empowered to plan? Applying PAR to establish democratic communicative spaces for sustainable rural development. ACTION RESEARCH 7(3): 313-334

Király, G; Pataki, G; Köves, A; Balázs, B (2013): Models of (future) society: Bringing social theories back in backcasting. FUTURES 51: 19-30

Kovács-Krasznai, E and Pataki, G (2016): The participation of experts and knowledges in the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & POLICY 57: 131-139

Pascual, U; Balvanera, P; Díaz, S; Pataki, G; et al. (2017): Valuing nature's contributions to people: the IPBES approach. CURRENT OPINION IN ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY 26-27: 7-16

Kiss, G; Pataki, G; Köves, A; Király, G. (2018): Framing Sustainable Consumption in Different Ways: Policy Lessons from Two Participatory Systems Mapping Exercises in Hungary. JOURNAL OF CONSUMER POLICY 41(1): 1-19