CET Lunch: Contradiction as Method – A Critical-Theoretical Approach to Ideational Economic Geography
Welcome to this CET Lunch seminar with Nicklas Riekötter a postdoctoral fellow from the University of Luxembourg.
Based on a recent publication, the talk asks whether a critical theory informed perspective on climate change and sustainability transformation can help explain a seemingly paradoxical pattern: why progressive projects regularly fail to gain lasting traction, and why narratives of a greater transformation remain conspicuously absent from European landscapes.
About the speaker
Nicklas Riekötter is an economic geographer by training, studied my BA/MA in Frankfurt/Lisbon, PhD in Marburg and works as a PostDoc at the University of Luxembourg since 2024.
His research sits at the intersection of critical economic geography, sustainability transformations, and ideational approaches to regional development, with a particular focus on rural and cross-border contexts in Western Europe. He is currently working on how sustainability imaginaries and climate change narratives shape and constrain processes of socio-economic transformation.