Staffan Jacobsson

Professor Emeritus

Staffan Jacobsson is Professor in Science and Technology Policy at the Department of Energy and Environment, Chalmers. He received his D.Phil. in Economics at the University of Sussex, U.K. in 1986 and focussed initially on technical change and industrial policy in newly industrialising countries. In the 1990s, he worked together with Swedish colleagues developing the analytical framework “technological innovation systems”. The framework was applied to a number of technologies, product groups and sectors. In addition, with Professor Bo Carlsson, he wrote a series of papers on policy. In the last two decades, he has continued to develop the analytical framework whilst applying it to new energy technologies, such as solar cells, gasified biomass and offshore wind power. In this empirical work, he has collaborated with e.g. Anna Bergek, Björn Sandén, Hans Hellsmark and Kersti Karltorp. His current research interests are threefold: a) specification of policy lessons for transforming the energy system into a sustainable one; b) developing the technological innovation system approach in order to make it more useful to policy makers; c) in the field of science policy, the focus is on (i) how “dominant beliefs” emerge, how they often lack empirical substance and, therefore, risk guiding policy in the wrong direction and (ii) how science is made socially useful. Jacobsson, who will be Emeritus in June 2016, has been honoured with three Teaching Awards from Masters and PhD students.