Jenny Rinkinen

Jenny Rinkinen is a social scientist whose work focuses at the intersection of consumption, technologies, and social change. She is enthusiastic in experimenting with theories and qualitatitve methods to analyse resource intensity of social practices in everyday life and in organisations. She is widely interested in interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral collaboration to develop solutions to sustainability challenges. 

She is currently leading her Research Council Finland Fellowship project 'Entanglements of multi-locality and energy demand’, which looks at energy demand as a spatially dispersed phenomenon rooted in social practices. She has previously been involved in many Research Council Finland projects on energy transitions. Jenny is an Adjunct Professor in Consumer Research at the University of Helsinki

Her work in the field of social practices and energy demand is internationally relevant: she is currently a Visiting Researcher at the Emerging Technologies Research Lab at Monash University, Melbourne. She has previously worked in Lancaster University, UK, and she has carried out empirical research in the UK, Vietnam, Thailand, and Australia. 

Jenny has published widely in the fields of sociology, consumer studies, sustainability science and social scientific energy research. Her books include Conceptualising demand: A distinctive approach to consumption and practice (Routledge, 2020) (co-authored with Elizabeth Shove and Greg Marsden) and Energy Fables (co-edited with Jacopo Torriti and Elizabeth Shove). Her degrees are from Aalto University: she holds a PhD in  Organisation and Management (2015), a Masters in Business Communication (2011) and a Bachelor in Economics (2009).