The future in sustainability transitions - Interlinkages between the multi-level perspective and futures studies

•Aiding the theoretical understanding of how sustainable change can take place.•Showcasing conceptual and methodological common points of futures studies and multi-level perspective.•Suggesting to use historical development paths in MLP and building towards the future with combined methods.•Scenario building and backcasting as the most prominent methods to link the two approaches in practice.•New effort to link the two approaches that could open up novel ways in building preferred futures.