Dr. Joost Vervoort

Joost Vervoort is Associate Professor of Transformative Imagination in the Environmental Governance Group at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development. Joost's research focuses on how different imaginations of the future connect to action in the present.

An ecologist by training, Joost holds a PhD from Wageningen University which focused on supporting different societal perspectives in navigating complex societal challenges related to sustainability, framed by social-ecological systems thinking and transition/transformation research. He then worked for seven years at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, before coming to UU.

Joost had published widely on foresight, anticipatory governance, transformations, and simulation gaming. He is the PI of the NWO Vidi project Anticiplay, focused on games for better futures; was a work package leader on the H2020 project CreaTures on creative practices for transformations, and he was a PI of the global scenarios project for the CGIAR's Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security programme for 10 years. In this last capacity, he has led over 150 high-level foresight and anticipation processes to guide major policies and strategies in many global regions. A sister project, RE-IMAGINE, led to critical research on anticipatory governance.

Seeking to break through the limits of current ways of working with the future, Joost is currently focusing on:

1) large-scale societal imagination practices. Joost researches the imaginative potential of the game industry, which is larger than music and film combined. He does this as part of his NWO Vidi project Anticiplay, together with PhD researchers Kyle Thompson and Carien Moossdorff and communications office Mae van Veldhoven. Joost also co-leads the development of a video game where you take fossil fuel companies to court, called ALL RISE. 

Imagination practices were also the focus of the Horizon 2020 project CreaTures which organized around twenty transformative art projects throughout Europe. Increasingly, Joost focuses on the music industry as a similar but unique space for creative expression connected to societal transformation. Joost also investigates the psychedelics industry as a source of imaginative transformation; and is focused on imaginative practices related to meditation.

2) the effects of resonant action in the present on public imaginations. Joost focuses on understanding how succesful actions in the present can inspire and shape how people imagine future possibilities. The role of emotions and embodiment, seen through a sociological lens, is important here. Joost has been involved, since 2015, in the Seeds of Good Anthropocenes project - a global initiative to gather a database of radical niche or 'seed' initiatives and use these seeds as a tool for the development of novel, inspiring Anthropocene futures. A main case for this focuses on the succesful campaign by Fossielvrij that played a role in the ABP pension fund's decision to divest 15 billion from fossil fuels, and similar climate campaigns and court cases. This work is conducted together with Irene Guijt from Oxfam GB and team members Nina Verbeek, Lauren McManamon and Lis Reichelt, and in collaboration with UUGlobe.

3) Imagination infrastructures: what are the conditions that enable widespread societal participation in the imagination of the future? Financial, physical, cultural, institutional and ecological infrastructures can support or restrict the transformative potential of public imaginations. This infrastructural focus has been an important part of the Horizon 2020 CreaTures program. In the context of this program, the evaluation of creative practices was investigated as imagination infrastructure. As a result, 9 Dimensions for evaluating and reflecting on the link between creative practices and societal transformations were created, and these have since been adopted widely by funders and creatives.

Together with RE-IMAGINE co-researcher Prof. Aarti Gupta, Joost is at the helm of the Anticipation and Imagination task force of the Earth System Governance programme.

Joost is also a Honorary Research Associate at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford and a Visiting Fellow at the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Kyoto Japan. Joost is a Fellow of the Urban Futures Studio, a Fellow of the Utrecht Centre for Global Challenges, and a member of the Utrecht Young Academy, where he leads a project on the use of the future across UU.

A number of fantastic PhD researchers have graduated with Joost in a supervisor role in recent years. These include:

• Dr. Meghan Bailey - focusing on participatory adaptation and agricultural systems change;
• Dr. Aniek Hebinck - focusing on food system transitions;
• Dr. Sean Low who researched the politics and practices of anticipation around climate engineering;
• Dr. Dhanush Dhinesh who focused on agricultural science-policy engagement;
• Dr. Astrid Mangnus, who researched participatory futures approaches for societal transformations;
• Dr. Karlijn Muiderman, who researched how anticipatory processes act as sites of governance and politics;
• Dr. Lucas Rutting, who researched how foresight processses could become more politically reflexive.

As a teacher, Joost leads the transdisciplinary course 'Global Transformation Project' as part of the BSc program Global Sustainability Science. In Global Transformation Project, students work together directly with policy makers and national experts in 30+ countries around the world to develop transformation pathways. Joost also leads the course 'The Sustainability Game', a unique collaboration between Utrecht University and Utrecht University of the Arts (HKU). In this course ,students work together to build digital games that engage players with sustainable futures.

In his free time, Joost is the singer of black metal band Terzij de Horde. This band's thematic focus is on many of the same societal challenges Joost addresses in his work, and actively seeks collaborations with other disciplines. The band's last album was placed as number 6 among the best Dutch albums by major newspaper NRC in 2022.