The project Understanding the role of Nordic Higher Education in REgional GREEN transitions (HEREGREEN) involved a series of three workshops held in Kristiansand (Norway), Tampere (Finland) and Linköping (Sweden) between 2023 and 2025. The project was a cooperation between University of Agder, Linköping University, Tampere University, and Aalborg University, funded by the Joint Committee for Nordic research councils in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NOS-HS).

The project focused on an innovative analysis of the understudied relationship between Nordic higher education institutions (HEIs) in peripheral regions, regional development and regional green transitions (RGTs), with a specific interest in the interactions between higher education (HE) and other key actors in regional knowledge ecosystems. The workshops were driven by three main questions:

1. What roles are Nordic HEIs playing in regional knowledge ecosystems connected to RGTs? 

2. What are the opportunities and challenges that characterise Nordic HEIs’ roles in these ecosystems and HEIs’ interactions with other key knowledge actors?

3. What can Nordic HEIs do, on their own and/or in partnership with other knowledge actors, to harness such opportunities and overcome the challenges?

The empirical scope included regional green transitions taking place in industrial sectors, in particular new high-tech sectors closely connected to global green transitions, and older industrial sectors with a global footprint that are undergoing major processes of reconversion to meet sustainability goals - e.g. offshore wind, hydrogen, batteries, electromobility, biogas, industrial automation, carbon capture, circular economy, reconversion of process industries, other forms of renewable energy production, industrial processes connected to agriculture and forestry. The main geographic focus was on regions in the Nordic countries, but we also had papers presenting empirical evidence from other countries such as Estonia, Brazil and China, which expanded our comparison and produced a better understanding of similarities and differences between the Nordics and other world regions.

The papers and discussions clustered around three main themes:

• The role of universities in steering regional green transitions

Universities operate in an increasingly complex environment. They are increasingly engaged in societal and economic activities, and the third stream has become a norm at most universities. The increased interaction between organisations across all institutional and organisational boundaries has made managing universities more challenging. The increasing demand for universities to take a more decisive role in enhancing green transformation and transition has also increased the pressure. The question of whether universities should lead green transition processes is emerging, entailing additional questions: what does leadership mean in this context, and what are the pros and cons of more active leadership of universities? If universities took the lead in the green transition, would they be able to speak in one voice? Would constructing one voice conflict with the decentralised nature of academia? How would the universities’ enhanced position change the dynamics of regional networks working to green their localities?

• Tensions and synergies between regionalisation and internationalization

Universities are located within specific local and regional geographies, but the scope of their teaching, research, and engagement/innovation activities is global in nature. At the same time, the industrial realities of green transitions bring to the fore important international(isation) dimensions associated with more universalistic knowledge assets and skills sets, alongside complex global value and supply chains. An important tension in this respect relates to the complex interplay between local relevance and global excellence, with university actors denoting differing degrees of attention to each orientation or outlook. Another dilemma pertains to the challenges associated with absorptive capacity of peripheral or ‘thin’ regions where the local knowledge generated tends to have a limited impact at the local level, for a variety of reasons. Against this backdrop, we discussed empirical and conceptual dimensions related to how such (and other types of) tensions affect green transitions trajectories and what types of actors, structures, mechanisms, and effects are at play.

• The role of social sciences in a STEM-dominated landscape

Social sciences are often sidelined or placed in a subordinate position to technical fields due to widespread techno-optimist beliefs and attitudes that view technology as a panacea for all ills. In reality, green transitions are connected to deeper processes of transformation within socio-technical systems, making it impossible to disentangle social from technical processes. In this context, social sciences can play a crucial role by adding critical perspectives, focusing on values, creating a meta-language that connects multiple disciplines and sectors, emphasising social legitimacy and understanding among diverse non-technical audiences, and providing a framework for comprehending the systemic interdependencies and transitions associated with green transitions. Some of the contributions explored the role of social sciences in regional green transitions from a conceptual perspective, as well as specific cases where social sciences research or education significantly contributes to regional green transition processes, e.g. through cross-disciplinary collaborations or other forms of boundary-spanning initiatives.