Johan Miörner

Johan Miörner is associate senior lecturer in Economic Geography at the Department of Human Geography at Lund University, and researcher at the Environmental Social Sciences department at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag). He is an economic geographer with a focus on regional industry dynamics, and sustainability transitions in infrastructure sectors. His work has been published across the social and economic sciences, with notable publications on theoretical and empirical issues related to the spatial dimension of industry dynamics.

Johan completed his education at Lund University, with an MSc in Economic History from the School of Economics and Management and a PhD in Economic Geography from the Social Science Faculty. His dissertation titled “(Re-) shaping regional economies: Regional innovation system dynamics and new industrial path development” was published by Lund University Press in 2019. His research has contributed with a dynamic perspective of regional innovation systems and has shed light on factors that enable or constrain industrial change under different regional conditions.

In his current work, Johan combines insights from economic geography and transition studies in order to highlight the interplay between global sector dynamics and regional transition trajectories. His work in the sanitation sector investigates why ‘status quo’ in the global sanitation sector prevails over time, despite the emergence of novel non-sewered solutions that challenge the paradigm of large-scale, centralized, sanitation solutions worldwide. Key questions include why conventional sanitation solutions look more or less the same across the world despite substantial spatial variation when it comes to local preconditions, and how to achieve truly transformative change in the global sanitation sector.

Johan has been an advisor to European policy makers on regional innovation policy, digitization, and transformative innovation policy for sustainability. He has published policy reports with the Swedish Institute, OECD, Vinnova, and the European Research Council, among others.