Studies of transformative change have been making headway in understanding the complexity of societal transformation processes. Yet, we lack understanding of how people’s lived experiences of transformations both shape and are shaped by meaning-making processes. In addressing this gap, we make two assumptions: Firstly, change processes comprise interactions between social actors that shape the way they are made sense of and experienced by the people involved in such interactions. Secondly, such change processes involve transformative experiences, which can bring to light previously taken-for-granted dimensions of lived experience. To address this research gap, we describe two complementary tools for analysing transformations: dialogical sense-making and critical phenomenology. These approaches share a focus on the experiential and sense-making dimensions, yet ask distinctly different kinds of questions and use different methods. Dialogical sense-making explores how people create meanings around transformations through various social interactions. Critical phenomenology analyses subjectivity, lived experience and structures that make possible and help shape experience. When brought into dialogue with each other, they allow for richer analyses of how the sense or meaning of transformations is constituted in experience.