Johan W. Schot (1961) currently holds the Chair of Global Comparative History at the Centre for Global Challenges, Utrecht University. He studied Social History as well as History and Policy at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam (1985, cum laude). In 1987 Schot was awarded the Prof.dr.ir. R.J. Forbes Prize for young scholars in the history of technology. Four years later, in 1991, he received his PhD from the University of Twente (Dissertation topic: Social Control of Technical Change). 

While completing his PhD, Schot was employed as Junior and later as Senior Consultant by the Centre for Technology and Policy Studies (TNO) (1985-1991), before becoming Associate Professor at the University of Twente. In 1999 Schot was appointed professor of Social History of Technology at the University of Twente (1999 – 2003) and Professor of History of Technology and Transition Studies at the Eindhoven University of Technology (1999 – 2014). In 2014 Schot became Director of the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) and Professor of History of Technology and Sustainability Transitions at the University of Sussex. In January 2019 Schot decided to return to the Netherlands where he was appointed Professor of Comparative Global History at the Centre for Global Challenges at University of Utrecht.

Johan Schot is co-founder of the Greening of Industry Network (1989), the Tensions of Europe Network (1999), the Dutch Knowledge Network on Systems Innovation and Transitions to Sustainable Development (2002), as well as founder of the Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium (2016) and the Deep Transitions Research Programme (2017).

In 2009, Johan Schot was elected to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) for the genuine interdisciplinarity of his work. In 2002 he was awarded a VICI grant by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). This is a personal award for top-scholars comparable with the ERC Advanced Investigator Grant. In 2015 he was awarded the Leonardo da Vinci Medal for his outstanding contributions to the history of technology. In 2017, he received an honorary degree awarded by the New University of Lisbon, Portugal for his outstanding research, development and contribution to the field of the history of technology.