Actor roles in transition: Insights from sociological perspectives

•Suggests the concept of roles to analyse interactions and relations of actors in sustainability transitions.•Operationalizes the concept of 'social roles' for the analysis of sustainability transitions.•Introduces role constellations as a level of analysis and as essential part of multi-actor transition processes.•Changing roles and role relations are indicative of changes in the social fabric including shared values, norms and beliefs.•Roles can be used as a transition governance intervention.

To date, the field of transition research lacks a suitable vocabulary to analyse the (changing) interactions and relations of actors as part of a sustainability transition. This article addresses this knowledge gap by exploring the potential of the concept of 'roles' from social interaction research. The role concept is operationalized for transition research to allow the analysis of (changing) roles and relations between actor roles as indicative of changes in the social fabric and shared values, norms and beliefs. It also allows considering the use of roles as a transition governance intervention. This includes creating new roles, breaking down or altering existing ones and explicitly negotiating or purposefully assigning roles, as well as the flexible use of roles as resources.