ISDL Newsletter

Learning for Sustainable Development. TOGETHER.

We, the Institute for Sustainable Development and Learning (ISDL) aim to research and support transdisciplinary learning processes for sustainable development. With this newsletter we keep you updated on our work in which we systematically put the South-North dimension at the core of our activities and actively contribute to the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Dear readers,

 

We all have been facing turbulent and challenging times since the outbreak of COVID-19 and we hope that everybody reading this newsletter is doing well. The current pandemic has highlighted the fragility of human-environment systems and the need to cope with uncertainty in a complex and highly interconnected world. We strongly believe that transdisciplinary learning can contribute navigating through this uncertainty and complexity that is inherent in many sustainability challenges such as climate change, bio-diversity loss or social injustices both on a globally and locally: through individual education processes, experience-based collaboration and societal interactions. Since its inauguration in September 2019 the Institute for Sustainable Development and Learning has already taken some further relevant steps to foster this type of learning in research, capacity mobilizing and agenda setting. In this first newsletter we want to give you a short overview on these activities. We plan to publish our newsletter quarterly and would be happy if this medium would foster a continuous exchange with our collaborators, critical friends and people as well as institutions interest in our work. Today and in the coming years learning for and with each other seems to be more important than ever if we really want to reach the SDGs and a just future within the planetary boundaries. We look very much forward to engaging with you in these learning processes.

 

Stay healthy!

 

Daniel Lang, Matthias Barth and Gerd Michelsen

 

 

 

Ein Bild, das Person, Mann, Anzug, tragen enthält.

Automatisch generierte Beschreibung

Daniel Lang

 

Ein Bild, das Person, Mann, Anzug, Kleidung enthält.

Automatisch generierte Beschreibung

Matthias Barth

 

Ein Bild, das Person, Mann, Anzug, stehend enthält.

Automatisch generierte Beschreibung

Gerd Michelsen

 

People and communication

The most important resource of an institute are people that jointly engage in realizing the mission. Therefore we are particularly happy that we have managed to hire already three researcher associates including a managing director starting in autumn as core team of the institute as well as three researchers and one person for administrative support in third party funded project.. Furthermore, several scientists of Leuphana from different faculties and organizational units have been affiliated to ISDL. Also the ISLD is currently hosting a PhD scholar from Indonesia as part of Advanced Knowledge and Skills for Sustainable Growth Project (AKSI) funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) L3749-INO under The Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education of the Republic of Indonesia.

Besides this newsletter we have also set up the web-page of ISDL that can be found here and you can also follow us on Twitter as well as Facebook.

 

 

 

  

 

 

Project: tdAcademy

 

In June 2020, we started our new project the tdAcademy. The aim of this project is to provide a place for the further development and dissemination of transdisciplinary research methodologies, concepts and competencies.

 

Read more

 

 

 

 

 

Sustainability and Digitalization

Postdoc Academy

Project proposal: ESD for 2030

Project proposal: ReLoFe

 

In December 2019, the project Sustainability and Digitalization – a European perspective started. In a series of workshops central issues of transdisciplinary learning in the field of digitization and sustainability will be exchanged from a specifically European  perspective.

In February, the second seminar of the second round of the Postdoc Academy for Transformational Leadership took place in Lüneburg. The PostDoc Academy is designed to develop the next generation of leaders in sustainability and transformation research.

In May, we also applied for another  research project: ESD for 2030 with international partners from the Baltic States puts special emphasis on individual learning processes of pupils and students in the context of sustainable community development.

In November we applied for the research project Regenerative Local Food Economies. It aims to investigate and support the development of regenerative local food economies involving SMMEs in urban and rural contexts in Germany and South Africa.

 

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

 

 

Project: tdAcademy

Platform for transdisciplinary research and studies

 

In June 2020, we started our new project the tdAcademy. The aim of this project is to provide a place for the further development and dissemination of transdisciplinary research methodologies, concepts and competencies.

 

The project tdAcademy began to work in June 2020 and is funded for at least three years by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research as part of the funding program "Social-Ecological Research". The founding partners are the ISOE – Institute for Social-Ecological Research, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Zentrum Technik und Gesellschaft from the TU Berlin and the Oeko-Institut.

The tdAcademy pursues three objectives. First, consolidating state of the art insights concerning four issues relevant for transdisciplinary research: societal impact, scientific impact, context dependencies, and new methods. Second, providing high quality capacity-building opportunities (e.g. summer schools or workshops) for transdisciplinary researchers, especially early-career researchers. Third, supporting and further developing the global transdisciplinary research community by providing a space for exchange, reflection, collaboration, and new ideas.

In July 2020, we hosted the first project meeting at Leuphana University Lüneburg with all founding partners. The aim of this workshop was to set the working structures for the project and to distribute the first tasks. In addition, we discussed the close collaboration between all founding partners and additional institutions engaging in transdisciplinary research as a key for the success of this project. We were delighted by the positive energy of all participants and their enthusiasm to advance transdisciplinary research and strengthen its community across institutes and all countries.

As a first step, we will start consolidating the newest insights concerning societal impact, scientific impact, context dependencies, and new methods of transdisciplinary research. For this, we will conduct reviews, analyze transdisciplinary research projects, organize workshops, and conduct interviews. Afterwards, we want to discuss our insights with leading experts in the field and develop new capacity-building opportunities.

The tdAcademy welcomes universities, institutes, organizations, and individuals who are interested in or working with the transdisciplinary research practice to share their experiences, provide capacity-building opportunities, and participate in dialogues to advance the field.

Further funding for an additional fellowship program, enabling research stays of individual scientists at one of the partner institutions as well as intensive collaboration in small fellowship-groups, is expected to be soon approved. 

 


 

Postdoc Academy for Transformational Leadership

 

In February the second seminar of the second round of the Postdoc Academy for Transformational Leadership took place in Lüneburg. Based on the huge demand of Postdocs from all over Europe and the overwhelmingly positive feedback for the first two rounds, the project got extended for a third and fourth round till 2023.

 

The Postdoc Academy for Transformational Leadership is designed to develop the next generation of leaders in sustainability and transformation research. It is an initiative of the Robert Bosch Stiftung and a joint project of the Robert Bosch Stiftung and the four academic centres Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, the Stockholm Resilience Centre and the Dutch Research Institute for Transitions (DRIFT) in Rotterdam. It provides an intensive high-end training with four seminars in two years that broaden the research competencies of postdocs and promote their qualifications towards transdisciplinary leadership. The program also offers seed funding (e.g. for stakeholder meetings or proposal writing activities) to small groups of participants, who plan to initiate research collaborations. Furthermore, an active network of current and former participants of the program will be established.

The academy is based on insights in the need for more and better integration of natural sciences, social sciences and humanities in sustainability research, a better recognition of inter- and transdisciplinary research in academia and excellent, highly competitive researchers who are able to lead inter- and transdisciplinary teams and academic institutions. Thus, it is seen as important to prepare early-career researchers for leadership positions in inter- and transdisciplinary contexts.

During the seminar at Leuphana in February this year 20 European Postdocs explored the potentials as well as the challenges of transdisciplinary research environments and transdisciplinary learning, including individual reflections on the own profile and portfolio as a researcher. They engaged with transdisciplinary research methodologies as well as transdisciplinary learning processes on different levels and learnt how to overcome typical difficulties in td research with insights into challenges and approaches of scaling.

 


 

The roundtable series Sustainability and Digitalization – a European perspective

 

In December 2019 the project "Sustainability and Digitalization – a European perspective" started. The project started as a joint effort from the Leuphana University Lüneburg, the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society, and the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU). It is financed by the Robert Bosch Stiftung and based on the WBGU report "Towards our Common Digital Future." 

 

The aim of the roundtable series is to bring expertise from the currently often separated communities focusing on sustainability and digital transformation, respectively, in a discourse to explore solution options for major societal challenges of the 21st century. For doing so we will conduct a series of six expert roundtables in which representatives of both communities will exchange views on central issues of transdisciplinary learning in the field of digitization and sustainability from a specifically European perspective. Based on in-depth discussions, learning both from and with one another is encouraged on three levels: social, organizational, and individual. We are aiming for (i) promoting increased cooperation between the communities, (ii) stimulating scientific and political discourse, and (iii) helping to familiarize the interested public with the topic.

The first three roundtables will be held in September 2021 in a digital format:

social learning

"Digital participation to empower civil society and accelerate sustainability transformations in urban and rural areas"

organizational learning

"Digitalization for the Greater Good: The role and responsibility of European business" – A European roundtable on corporate digital responsibility

individual learning

"Education, Sustainability, and Digitalization – How is learning in schools shaped?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The other three workshops are planned as face-to-face events at the end of January 2021. The findings and results will be presented in different manners, including in an interactive exhibition for the general public at the Futurium in Berlin and in a symposium probably held 2021 in Brussels for a selected group of scientists, members of society, and politicians.

 


 

Project proposal: ESD for 2030

 

In May, we also applied for the research project "ESD FOR 2030: Learning for and in resilient and sustainable communities" with international partners from the Baltic States: Besides the Leuphana University of Lüneburg, the University of Latvia, the University of Klaipeda in Lithuania and the University of Estonia for Life Sciences are partners in the planned project. Participating municipalities are the Hanseatic City of Lüneburg as reference municipality in Germany, Valmiera in Latvia, Klaipeda in Lithuania and Viljandi in Estonia. Secondary schools in the cities involved have also agreed to participate in the project. With a budget of 330,000 € the project is scheduled to start in January 2021.

 

The project aims to make the potential of real-world laboratories and experiments as places of mutual learning - in the sense of education for sustainable development - available to municipalities and cities. Specifically, the role of pupils and young adults in these processes is to be strengthened. To this end, special emphasis will be put on individual learning processes of pupils and students in the sense of project-based and experience-based learning as well as on joint cooperative and social learning processes between various local actors and the pupils and students. Furthermore, the staff from local city administrations shall be intensively involved in the research and development process.

In addition to the project management and the coordination of the partner network, the objectives are to be achieved by 5 further work packages: (i) Capacity Mobilizing and Training Formats for the participating teachers and administrative staff, (ii) Real-world experiments with pupils and students actively involving administrative staff and other local actors, (iii) Facilitation of a focused exchange between the participants through three exchange formats targeting all groups of actors involved, (iv) Formative monitoring during the entire project duration to enable a comparative evaluation and methodological support of the processes in the partner municipalities and (v) Establishment of a WiKi for the dissemination of the project results.

 

 


 

Project proposal: Regenerative Local Food Economies

 

In November we applied for the research project "Regenerative Local Food Economies" as part of the funding program of "2020 South African/ German Collaborative Research Programme (SAG-CORE)" on: The Interface between Global Change and Social Sciences – post COVID-19. This project addresses failures that have precipitated the crisis in food systems during the Covid-19 pandemic, recognising that these, predominantly human behaviours, are intertwined with systems of inequality, the mechanisms driving globalised capitalism, and climate change-related risks and disasters. It is a joint project together with our partners from Rhodes University and University of Fort Hare (South Africa).

 

The proposed applied and socially oriented research of this proposal brings transdisciplinary social science and food system practice development (drawing on farmers and food system actors' knowledge and experience, sustainability sciences, economics and education and expansive learning praxis) into a relationship with ecological research, business studies and food systems development studies. The impact from this project intends to build and connect knowledge to increase the (societal) impact of research, and evidence new development pathways which can accelerate transitions towards sustainable development through deliberate social learning processes. In doing so this project explicitly seeks to inform knowledge towards sustainable societal transitions and transformation across two themes: (1) Governance of societal transformations to sustainability – post-COVID-19 (Theme a) and (2) Well-being, quality of life, identity, and social and cultural values in relation to transformations to sustainability - post-COVID-19.

 

Specifically, this project aims to investigate and support the development of regenerative local food economies involving SMMEs in urban and rural contexts in Germany and South Africa, through co-engaged transdisciplinary social learning and skills ecosystem approaches. It considers how these approaches contribute to building back better in ways that reflect just recovery principles and practice. It further conceptualises how regenerative food economy practices and just recovery can offer catalytic understandings for informing Just Transitions towards sustainable social-ecological transformation within wider contexts and in a medium to longer term sustainable development framework aligned with the SDGs.

 


             

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