Wanhao Zhang

About

Wanhao Zhang is a Research Fellow at the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture (KULT), NTNU. He holds a PhD in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Public Policy from University College London (UCL), and an MSc in Eurasian Political Economy and Energy from King’s College London. His research lies at the intersection of technology, environment, and society, and centres on the governance of socio-technical and sustainability transitions across environmental, scientific, and institutional domains.

With training in economics, political economy, and public governance, his work draws on interdisciplinary and multi-method approaches to examine how policies, institutions, expertise, and social practices shape environmental change and broader processes of societal transformation. At NTNU, including through his work in the MidWay project, he studies sufficiency, sustainable consumption, and governance in food systems, with particular attention to agriculture, systems of provision, and the politics of transition. More broadly, his research addresses how governance operates across scales, from everyday life and institutional settings to national policy systems and transnational transitions, and how these processes are shaped by power, expertise, institutional change, and knowledge production.

Research Interests

Energy transition, decarbonization, and environmental governance
Food systems, sustainability, and resource governance
Science policy, higher education governance, and knowledge production

Research

A Middle Way? Probing Sufficiency through Meat and Milk in China (MidWay)

The primary objective of the MidWay-project is to probe the concept of sufficiency as a useful organising principle to achieve reduced consumption based on the empirical inputs from meat and milk practices in China.

Publications

Zhang, W.H, & Zhou, C. (2026). Tolerable life in the just energy transition: Embodied discomfort, asymmetric obligations, and the politics of temperature. Energy Research & Social Science, 135, 104673.

Zhang, W.H., & Wang, C. Y. (2026). Institutional translations of science policy: How global collaboration agendas are practiced in a leading Chinese university. Minerva. Proof submitted and Forthcoming. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-026-09642-1

Wu, Q., Wu, Z., Zhang, W., & Wang, W. (2026). Is Interdisciplinary Research More Conducive to Knowledge Innovation? Evidence From Swiss National Science Foundation Projects. European Journal of Education, 61(2), e70530.

Cheng, Z., Liu, X., Zou, Y., Zhang, W., & Zhou, J. (2026). Rethinking Knowledge Production in University Research Teams: An Intellectual Capital‐Based Analysis From Chinese Engineering Disciplines. European Journal of Education, 61(1), e70455.

Chen, S., Zhou, C., & Zhang, W. (2026). From evolutionary game to collaborative governance: a geographical observation of intergovernmental interactions in China’s water ecosystems protection. Regional Environmental Change, 26(1), 25.

Zhou, C., Zhang, W., Richardson-Barlow, C., & Zhang, Z. (2025). Navigating carbon neutrality: policy pathways and consistency on industrial decarbonization in China. Carbon Balance and Management, 20(1), 66.

Wu, H., Lu, Y., Zhou, C., & Zhang, W. (2025). Navigating Water Sustainability: Evolutionary Game Analysis of Cross-Sectoral Collaborative Governance in China. Water Economics & Policy, 11(3).

Zhang, W. (2025). Cooling Conflicts: Intergenerational Negotiations of Air Conditioning Use in Chinese Families (Doctoral dissertation, UCL (University College London)).

Zhou, C., Richardson-Barlow, C., Fan, L., Cai, H., Zhang, W.H, & Zhang, Z. (2025). Towards organic collaborative governance for a more sustainable environment: Evolutionary game analysis within the policy implementation of China's net-zero emissions goals. Journal of Environmental Management, 373, 123765.

Zhang, W.H., Cai, H., & Yuan, Q. (2024). Unravelling regional development through the Production-Living-Ecological perspective: Assessing heterogeneity and expert insights. Urban Climate, 55, 101937

Xia, M., Phillips, F., Zhang, W.H., Cai, H. H., Dai, J., Zhang, L., & Wu, Y. (2024). From Carbon Capture to Cash: Strategic Environmental Leadership, AI, and the Performance of US Firms. Journal of Organizational and End User Computing (JOEUC), 36(1), 1-24.

Zhang, W. H., Yuan, Q., & Cai, H. (2023). Unravelling urban governance challenges: Objective assessment and expert insights on livability in Longgang District, Shenzhen. Ecological Indicators, 155, 110989.