Alexander Deveux
Alexander Deveux started in April 2022 as a PhD student for LESTRA (learning in view of sustainability transitions) - an European Research Council project. Together with Prof. Dr. Katrien Van Poeck as main supervisor, the LESTRA-team conducts research on how learning can contribute fruitfully to sustainability transitions.
Alexander’s PhD research focuses on how ‘place’ plays a role within micro-processes of learning in wider transitions. It thereby acknowledges the situatedness of sustainability projects within spaces that are (often) already inhabited by people for whom the place has meaning because of prior attachments and practices. These habitualised ways of living in a place inform how people think about what a place was, is or can be, and thus influence the learning processes that come with sustainability interventions. For his investigations, Alexander focuses on the grassroots level of the energy-mining transition by following-up on a set of cases where people organise themselves to address either the implementation of technological innovations in their neighbourhood, or to resist the encroachment of mining projects in rural territories, so-called ‘sacrifice zones’, deemed necessary to supply the minerals for an energy transition. The cases are located in European and Latin American contexts.
In 2024 Prof. Dr. Tim Devos from the ‘Centre for Mobility and Spatial Planning’ (AMRP, University of Ghent), decided to become Alexander’s co-promotor and accompany the new conceptual and methodical work for the study of the role of place in the confluence learning and transition processes. Prof. Dr. Danilo Kato from the ‘Research Group on Interculturality in Science Education’ (GEPIC, University of São Paulo) hosted Alexander for a research stay in 2024-2025 to explore together the socio-environmental consequences in the Global South of the opening up of new mining territories.
Alexander obtained his bachelor degree in electromechanical engineering from Ghent University in 2018 before switching to the faculty of social and political sciences. Here he successfully finished the masters program in conflict and development studies in 2020, which he followed up with an educational masters of teaching in social sciences.
Mail: Alexander.Deveux@UGent.be
Research Explorer: https://research.ugent.be/web/person/alexander-deveux-0/en