Richard Anar holds a MA in International Relations from the Central European University (CEU) in Vienna. He joined ZSI in January 2023. His research brings together qualitative and quantitative methods, with expertise in Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA/LCA) and Safe and Sustainable by Design (SsbD). Across his projects, Richard applies a broad methodological toolkit spanning policy analysis, sustainability indicators, and comprehensive assessments of processes and organisations.
Richard, what brought you to ZSI and what motivated you to go into applied social science?
My path to ZSI was shaped by a longstanding interest in the intersection of politics, society, and systems of production. Studying Political Science and later International Relations gave me a strong theoretical grounding, but I was always drawn to work that translates analysis into action. My time as a Junior Researcher at “Médecins Sans Frontières” deepened that instinct: working in a humanitarian context makes the stakes of research very tangible. ZSI offered exactly what I was looking for: rigorous, interdisciplinary, and genuinely committed to making research matter beyond academia.
What does your everyday work as a researcher at ZSI look like? What projects are you currently working on, and what are your responsibilities?
No two weeks are alike. That is one of the things I value most about my work at ZSI. On any given day I might be conducting stakeholder interviews, developing methodological frameworks, writing policy briefs, or analysing life cycle data.
I am currently involved in two projects: CONSERWA is an EU Horizon project bringing together 26 partners from twelve European countries, focused on the transition to agroecological weed management in various cropping systems. Within it, I apply Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) and Safe and “Sustainable by Design”-frameworks to assess the social sustainability of agroecological farming practices across their entire life cycle. The ADJUST project addresses energy poverty and just transition. In this project, I am actively engaging stakeholders and developing policy recommendations. I have deliberately tried to keep a diverse portfolio at this stage of my career. I believe depth comes faster when it is grounded in a wide range of experience.
You mentioned that you are currently working with the Social Life Cycle Assessment method. Can you briefly explain what makes this method so distinctive?
SLCA is a method for systematically assessing the social and socio-economic impacts of products, processes, and organisations throughout their entire life cycle, from raw material extraction to end-of-life. Its strength lies in highlighting what conventional impact assessments tend to overlook: the human dimension. Who is producing? Under what conditions? How are communities and workers affected along the supply chain? These are questions that matter enormously, and SLCA gives us a structured way to answer them. The field is evolving rapidly, and I find that genuinely exciting, both theoretically and in practice.
How do your projects contribute to solving current societal problems?
Each project addresses a different aspect of the same global challenge: How do we make our economies and societies more sustainable and equitable? CONSERWA contributes at the level of agricultural production by applying SLCA to assess the social impacts of agroecological farming practices across their entire life cycle, while examining their optimal combinations and transferability across diverse European farming systems and climate scenarios. ADJUST directly engages with energy poverty and the social dimensions of climate change, issues with immediately tangible consequences for vulnerable communities. What all these projects share is a commitment to evidence that can be used by policymakers, businesses, and civil society.
Do you have any specific ideas for projects you would like to work on in the future?
I am particularly interested in deepening and expanding the application of SLCA at the organisational level, that is, going beyond assessing individual products to evaluate how entire organisations perform against social sustainability criteria. While product-level SLCA is increasingly established, applying the same rigour to organisations remains relatively new territory, with significant potential for companies and institutions seeking credible, comprehensive social impact assessments. A key ambition is to develop an in-house SLCA methodology that can be applied across a variety of projects, building institutional capacity that grows with each application. Looking at current and upcoming European research calls, LCA, SLCA, and “Safe and Sustainable by Design” applications are expanding steadily across the European research framework. The goal is to be positioned to deliver on that demand with a robust, well-developed methodological toolkit. There is also a compelling frontier around integrating SLCA with environmental LCA to produce genuinely comprehensive assessments. Private businesses, too, are increasingly seeking credible tools to understand the social impact of their products and processes, and the research community has much to offer in this regard.
What do you think is the significance of social innovation for sustainable transformation processes?
Social innovation is fundamental to transformation and change, precisely because it refuses to treat structural problems as purely technical issues. Sustainable development cannot be achieved solely by optimising existing systems; rather, it requires new social arrangements, new forms of participation, and new ways of organising society. Social innovation creates space for experimentation at the local and institutional level and generates models that can subsequently be replicated and scaled up. At ZSI, that conviction is anchored in the institutional identity and shapes our approach even to highly technical work: Always asking who is included, who is excluded, and who has the power to shape outcomes?
What does your work mean to you personally — and what would you say to young researchers considering a career in applied social science?
ZSI feels like a place where intellectual honesty and real-world relevance are taken seriously at the same time – and that combination is rarer than it should be. The work is demanding, the questions are genuinely difficult, and the answers rarely come neatly packaged. But that is also what makes it meaningful. To anyone drawn to this kind of work, my honest advice would be: do not limit yourself too quickly. Read widely, take on projects that feel slightly outside your comfort zone, and invest in methodology – not just for the tools themselves, but for the discipline of thinking carefully about how you produce knowledge and for whom. Applied social science is most powerful when it is both rigorous and humble, and when it keeps asking whose perspective is missing from the room.
Thank you and all the best!
