Innovation and sustainability transitions
Discourses of sustainable agriculture
Stakeholder participation and grassroots innovations
Upscaling and outscaling of innovations
Agricultural innovation systems
Innovation networks

Dr. Frans Hermans has extensive experience in the field of participatory integrated assessment and sustainable rural development as a researcher at the interface of science and public policy at Telos, the Brabant Centre for Sustainable Development of the Tilburg University in The Netherlands, where he worked between 2000 and 2012. In 2007 he started a part-time PhD project in the Land Dynamics Group of Wageningen University, where he wrote his dissertation on the development of innovation networks that aim to trigger a transition towards a more sustainable agricultural sector. He successfully defended his dissertation in 2011. From 2011 until 2014 Dr. Frans Hermans worked as post-doctoral researcher in the Knowledge, Technology and Innovation Group of Wageningen University on the European-funded research project SOLINSA: Support of Learning Innovation Networks for Sustainable Agriculture. This project had a strong focus on grassroots innovations in the agricultural sector. In 2014 he moved to Germany and joined IAMO as a Research Associate focusing on transitions and structural change in the agricultural sector.