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Ola Leifler on how to reorient an academic career towards societal transformation 

Ola came to see us to share how he made a radical shift from software engineering and AI towards understanding how to make a difference.

Published onMay 03, 2022
Ola Leifler on how to reorient an academic career towards societal transformation 
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A couple of times a month, we invite interesting guest lecturers to SF Lab. Today, we were lucky enough to listen and talk to Ola Leifler, PhD at Linköpings University, Department of Computer and Information Science (IDA). It was very interesting and inspiring! Below is a brief summary of his talk.

Reorientating an academic career to become an agent for meaningful change to societal transformation 

Since starting my career as an academic properly in 2013, I’ve made a somewhat radical shift from software engineering and AI towards understanding what it takes to make a difference and support a societal transformation towards sustainability. To that effect, I have made three main changes to my career that I would like to share my experiences with. First, I joined and initiated a couple of physical and online collaborations with fellow academics who have a keen interest in the intersection between sustainability, education, engineering and sometimes IT (e.g., the Karlskrona group). Second, based on new insights, practical collaborations and  publications that resulted from that work, I managed to reboot my career as an academic towards learning for a sustainable development, resulting as of now in a research project ("Switching the current", on transforming the energy system in Sweden) and a changes to several LiU courses, of which I will present primarily one (”Megagame-design for societal transformation in the light of climate change”). The focus of both research and teaching are now centered on designing large-scale games for understanding the complexities, power relations and social dynamics related to societal transformations. Third, I engaged myself in the strategic work at LiU in deciding on policy and teacher training, resulting in a new quality evaluation model for the integration of sustainability in education, teacher training modules and new university-wide goals for promoting societal change.

About: Ola Leifler got a PhD in AI and decision support in 2011. Upon returning to academia 2013, he quickly wanted to realign his teaching (which occupied most of the time) with his personal commitment to sustainability, and create space for research aligned with his values to that end. When he’s not doing academic stuff, he’s a compulsive sourdough baker, a manic organic gardener, medieval hobbyist, and serial boardgamer. There’s probably an acronym for that.

Optional reading:
Building a Climate Change Megagame (three-part blog series): https://paxsims.wordpress.com/2021/04/18/building-a-climate-change-megagame-part-i/


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