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PhD researcher Nikki Kluskens from the Department of Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences has completed her doctoral work within the Technology, Innovation & Society (TIS) group. Kluskens investigated how citizens participate in the Dutch energy transition and shows that engagement becomes meaningful only when understood as an evolving, embedded, relational process rather than a fixed activity.

Shifting views

Public discussions about energy transitions often position citizens as either contributors who must support new technologies or individuals who should be empowered to take part in decision making. These expectations place a heavy burden on households and communities that are navigating rising energy bills, uncertainty about local projects, and rapidly changing technologies. Kluskens demonstrates that such narrow views overlook how people’s roles, motivations, and possibilities emerge through social interactions, everyday life and institutional constraints.

Living dynamics

The transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy is inevitable for climate change mitigation. In that debate, you often hear that citizen participation is crucial. Yet, what exactly is meant by that? While policy and academic research emphasize the importance of participation, participatory processes in practice often yield mixed results. Expected outcomes, such as increased public acceptance, inclusion, and empowerment, frequently fail to materialize. In some cases, these processes even lead to frustration or conflict between citizens and institutions.

Kluskens wanted to understand the gap between the promises of participation and its outcomes in practice, which assumptions underpin ‘citizen participation, and how a different perspective and approach might help achieve the desired outcomes such as public acceptance and empowerment.

Local realities

The research draws on heat, wind and solar initiatives across the Netherlands, including projects in marginalized neighbourhoods where residents balance everyday pressures with long term sustainability goals. In these contexts, engagement is often seen as even more difficult. But actually as engagement is multiple and comes about by different factors, especially in these contexts challenges exists not because of a lack of engagement, but not seeing what is already there and making that relevant for the issues at stake By highlighting these situated practices, Kluskens shows that engagement is multiple, and cannot be reduced to invited formats alone

New perspectives

Kluskens wanted to understand the gap between the promises of participation and its outcomes in practice  Also, which assumptions underpin ‘citizen participation? Might a different perspective and approach help achieve the desired outcomes such as public acceptance and empowerment?

She researched these ‘outcomes’ such as acceptance, citizenship and implementation in vulnerable areas’ with a broadened and different view on engagement. Also, to understand whether and why fail to materialize (namely in a limited perspective of participation)

Rethinking approaches

Kluskens concludes that citizen participation should not be seen as a checkbox to be ticked, but should actively look at other actors as well, as participation comes about in interaction.

Therefore rethinking participation not necessarily as a tool/fixed ideal, but we should see it as a practice or relating, with attention to relationships and context, and capabilities. We should not see it as a one-time thing or format, but as something co-evolving. That also means looking around you and paying attention to what is already, instead of trying to fit ‘citizens’ into fixed participation ‘straightjackets’

Nikki Kluskens defended her thesis on 17 April 2026.
Title of the thesis:
Supervisors: Johanna Höffken, Floor Alkemade