Elsie Onsongo
Elsie Onsongo is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Frugal Innovation in Africa , an initiative that is part of the strategic alliance between Leiden University, Delft University of Technology and the Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
Elsie’s research interest lies in the area of innovation for inclusive development. She explores frugal and inclusive business models designed and deployed at the base of pyramid markets, how they balance ethics and profitability, and how they interact with the institutional elements in these contexts. She adopts a multi-disciplinary approach in her analysis, combining perspectives from organisational studies, sociotechnical transitions studies and economics. Previously, she conducted research on information technology investments in the Kenyan commercial banking sector.
Elsie has a PhD from the ‘The Economics of Innovative Change’ programme jointly offered by Friedrich Schiller University Jena and the Max Planck Institute of Economics in Jena, Germany. Her dissertation titled “Inclusive Innovation and Institutional Change” explored the sources, drivers and dynamics of societal transformations associated with mobile money innovation in Kenya. This has led to the working paper – Inclusive Innovation and Rapid Sociotechnical Transitions: The Case of Mobile Money in Kenya – co-authored with Professor Schot
She has worked at Strathmore University in Kenya in various teaching, research and administrative capacities. She has been a visiting research fellow at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex, UK.
Laur Kanger
Laur Kanger is a postdoctoral researcher in Sustainability Transitions Studies at Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex, and a lecturer in Technology Research at the University of Tartu, Estonia.
Laur is currently involved in theorizing the possible rupture in the evolution of industrial modernity (Deep Transition) and researching the emergence of new generation innovation policies (as part of the Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium).
He has published on the role of users in socio-technical transitions, qualitative techniques for theorizing from historical narratives, and the factors affecting the possible uptake of secure multi-party computation tools. His teaching portfolio covers theories of contemporary societies, sociological theory (classical and modern), social informatics and information society theory. As a researcher whose main strength lies in conceptualization, comparison and synthesis of various literatures Laur’s intellectual career has been characterized by insatiable curiosity towards highly diverse domains of knowledge.
Laur has a PhD in Science and Technology Studies from the University of Edinburgh. His thesis, supervised by Donald MacKenzie and Robin Williams, traced various attempts to build personal computers in the Soviet Baltic states.
Laur also believes that on average academics should take themselves far less seriously.
