Course Schedule

Start > Leuphana Bachelor (B.A./B.Eng./B.Sc./LL.B.) -> Major Umweltwissenschaften (ab Studienbeginn WiSe 17/18) -> Concepts of Social Sustainability Science

Lehrveranstaltungen

"When we stand up, they have to negotiate with us" - South-North North-South proposals from local to global sustainable changes (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Deepika Joon, Aymara Victoria Llanque Zonta

Termin:
 wöchentlich | Montag | 12:15 - 15:45 | 18.10.2021 - 04.02.2022 | C 14.204 Seminarraum
14-täglich | Mittwoch | 17:00 - 18:00 | 24.11.2021 - 19.01.2022 | C 12.009 Seminarraum | voluntary space for dialogue / reflection

Inhalt: The course proposes to reflect on youth agency, participation and contributions for sustainability transformation from the perspective of knowledge generation. We will focus on sustainability from the point of peace and conflict resolution through lectures and workshop style methodology; for an understanding of political participation and youth leadership building connected to sustainability. We will emphasize in social learning and the adoption of a transdisciplinary approach to the interface between science, policy and practice. The inspiration will be local proposals to global changes, mainly examples of South-North North-South social movements, and their pragmatic responsible towards sustainability. There are four threads under which sessions will be organized in the seminar: 1. Interface of Science, Policy and Practice, resonance with social movements from North and South. 2. Understanding meta topics- transformative, transgressive and transdisciplinary learning. 3. Missing Peace (piece) in Sustainability: Understanding conflict transformation. 4. Building youth agency for change- advocacy, understanding political participation and building youth leadership.

Citizen responses to sustainability – moving past recycling to real change (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Senan Gardiner

Termin:
 wöchentlich | Dienstag | 10:15 - 11:45 | 18.10.2021 - 04.02.2022 | C 12.009 Seminarraum

Inhalt: This course will not tell you what bananas are better – fairtrade or organic. It won’t tell you which plastic numbers are recycleable. It will however support you in engaging with your local community to find and effect an actual positive change for sustainability. This course is about understanding that system change consists of many scales of intervention and one often neglected level is that of the community. We will explore citizen responses that go beyond recycling to empowering each-other and setting up resilient structures. We will self-evaluate the course as we go, in a participatory manner and map our own learning processes. In this course we will pair you in groups with community organisations that will have a two-way process of teaching you and receiving help from you. We explore concepts such as activism in a digital age, citizen science, community development and action research.

Perception and communication of environmental risks: Psychological foundations (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Astrid Kause

Termin:
 wöchentlich | Donnerstag | 08:15 - 09:45 | 18.10.2021 - 04.02.2022 | C 12.101 Seminarraum

Inhalt: “Nothing can be said to be certain but death and taxes” wrote Benjamin Franklin just before the French Revolution. This ironic comment expresses that in our everyday lives, we permanently face risks, and associated uncertainties, and often, we do not even notice. But, instead of facing risks or trying to understand their real nature, many people, including experts or politicians, try to avoid risks or even behave in ways that harm themselves or others. Consequently, they may fear what is not really dangerous, but ignore what may actually be harmful. But, democratic systems require that individuals can understand risks, and make informed decisions. Through the lens of environmental psychology and related disciplines, we will first define what risk and uncertainty are for individuals, and look at theories for conceptualising these. This extends to individual differences in risk perceptions, such as environmental values, political affiliation, or whether people have directly experienced floods, extreme heat or other environmental hazards. Second, we will study how risks are communicated, namely how numbers, pictures and words shape risk perceptions. With this background, we’ll finally discuss why and how psychological research on risk perception and communication can help building a society which is capable to deal with environmental risks. The seminar will include topical sessions with student-led discussions, break-out groups and short presentations. Learning goals are a solid understanding of mechanisms of risk perception and communication, and of the methods used by psychologists and scientists from related disciplines for studying these. This will include 1) reading and interpreting scientific evidence and presenting it to others 2) applying this scientific evidence to practice, 3) developing one’s own research idea and refining it over the course of the seminar 4) discussing the broader societal relevance of transparent and clear risk communications.