Duration: October 2024 – September 2029

Role: Postdoctroal Researcher

Funding: FWF

In the SETER project, led by Dr Stephan Pühringer, we are investigating how projects, discourses and practices relating to Socio-Ecological Transformation (SET) are permeated and shaped by Economic Reasoning (ER). In my work package on ‘Education’, we are analysing the extent to which Austrian economics and business administration degree programmes integrate issues of transformation – such as climate change, social justice or digitalisation – into their teaching and curricula, and, if so, exactly how.

Research output with my participation:

Stephan, Pühringer; Bäuerle, Lukas (2025): The Economics of Socio-Ecological Transformations. A conceptual framework. ICAE Working Paper Series no. 171. Online here.

Duration: January 2024 – January 2026

Role: PI

This project marked the first time a team of researchers had examined a group of institutions operating under the umbrella term ‘New Economy Space’ (NES), which translates new economic knowledge into various social arenas. The case study of German NES think tanks focused on the inherent knowledge practices and the differences compared with established economic policy advice.

Research output with my participation:

Bäuerle, Lukas; Reinke, Rouven (2026): Pluralising the economic knowledge of politics. Evidence from a German case study. ICAE Working Paper Series no. 180. Online hier.

Bäuerle, Lukas; Maasen, Sabine (2025): Transforming Economics from the Side Lane? The New Economy Space and its Thinktanks. ICAE Working Paper Series no. 170. Online hier.

Duration: August 2023 – December 2025

Role: PI

Funding: WiSo Faculty University of Hamburg

In this project, we investigated how systemic inertia, competing sustainability narratives and imagined visions of the future are shaping the transformation of the German heating and housing sectors. We focused on interviews with practitioners involved in the heating transition during the ‘crucial phase’ of the GEG amendment process.

Research output with my participation:

Semb, Josephine; Bäuerle, Lukas; Sagvosdkin, Valentin (2026): System-Induced Transition Inertia in the Transformation of the German Heating and Housing Sector. In: Energy Policy 212, 115181. Online here.

Sagvosdkin, Valentin; Bäuerle, Lukas; Semb, Josephine; Praetorius, Barbara (2026): To Build or Not to Build? Sustainability Narratives between Growth-Oriented “Eco-Markets” and Regulative “Sufficiency” in Germany’s Heat Transition. In: Energy Research & Social Science 131, 104527. Online here.

Bäuerle, Lukas; Barkey, Merle; Sagvosdkin, Valentin; Semb, Josephine (2026): “We need long-term thinking, predictability, and reliability.” Imagined futures of the German heating and housing transition. In: Futures 175, 103736. Online here.

Transfer:

23.2.2026: Wärmewende abseits der Schlagzeilen: Wie sie von betroffenen Unternehmen und Verbänden gesehen und bewertet wird. KOMPASS Public Brief 2026-2. Link.

Duration: March 2021 – June 2022

Role: Co-PI

Funding: Volkswagenstiftung

In the „New Imaginative Economies“ research project, we used a Sensemaking © approach to investigate whether and how spontaneous entrepreneurial behavior during the Covid-19 pandemic led to social innovations and how this can contribute to lasting change, for example in the way agents imagine the future and deal with radical uncertainty.

Research output with my participation:

Hector, Veronica; Schlaile, Michael; Bäuerle, Lukas; Friedrich, Jonathan; Peters, Luis; Hilt; Annette; Zscheischler, Jana; Graupe; Silja (2026): Innovation Amidst Turmoil, part 2: Narratives and Sensemaking among German Managers during the pandemic. In: Journal of Innovation Economics and Management: prepublication. Online here.

Schlaile, Michael; Hector, Veronica; Peters, Luis; Bäuerle, Lukas; Smith, Beth; Hilt; Annette; Graupe; Silja (2024): Innovation Amidst Turmoil: A SenseMaker Study of Managerial Responses to the COVID-19 Crisis in Germany. In: Journal of Innovation Economics and Management. Online here.

Bäuerle, Lukas; Graupe, Silja (2023): Reframing economic agency in times of uncertainty. In: International Journal for Pluralism and Economic Education 14(1): 31-46. Online here.

Duration: Januar 2017 – Dezember 2018

Role: Researcher

Funding: Forschungsinstitut für gesellschaftliche Weiterentwicklung Düsseldorf

Institution: Hochschule für Gesellschaftsgestaltung

In the context of the ongoing debate on the need for reform of economic education, the project focused on the students’ perspective. In cooperation with a team from the Goethe University in Frankfurt, a mixed-methods survey was conducted to investigate student orientations and ways of dealing with economics programs in Germany and Austria.

Research output with my participation:

Bäuerle, Lukas; Pühringer, Stephan; Ötsch, Walter Otto (2020): Wirtschaft(lich) studieren. Erfahrungsräume von Studierenden der Wirtschaftswissenschaften. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Freitext online here.

Bäuerle, Lukas (2020): Ökonomisierte ökonomische Bildung. Zur Dominanz struktureller Bedingungen wirtschaftswissenschaftlicher Studiengänge. In: Grenzen überschreiten, Pluralismus wagen. Perspektiven sozioökonomischer Hochschullehre, Nr. 3 in der Reihe Sozioökonomische Bildung und Wissenschaft, ed. by Fridrich, Christian; Hedtke, Reinhold und Ötsch, Walter Otto. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 111-134. Online here.

Pühringer, Stephan; Bäuerle, Lukas (2019): What economics education is missing: the real world. In: International Journal of Social Economics 46(8): 977-991. Online here.