“Imagine future Africa!” – These lines still echo remembering the opening ceremony of the newly established campus “Future Africa” in Pretoria. 500 people from different countries, backgrounds and contexts. Shouting these three words with full voice, to celebrate. A ceremony for the establishment of the Future Africa Campus. A research centre at Pretoria University, which … Keep reading
Early in the morning, we left to the well-known Sustainability Institute (SI) located in the Southwest of Stellenbosch city. We were full of excitement about how the institute would be like that we had heard so much about before and during our trip. The institute was founded in 1999 in Lynedoch Ecovillage with the aim … Keep reading
After the impressive start, the opening of the Future Africa Campus took place. We had so many thoughts and impressions to process, but only 48 hours on a rocky road to Rhodes University in Grahamstown, more than 1,000km south of Pretoria. Even more impressions were added, when meeting many inspiring people from the field of … Keep reading
On Friday, the 29th of March, the official opening event of the Future Africa Campus took place. A proper description of it would be: celebrating a wonderful place and a vision of research for Africa. A broad range of people was invited, from politicians and foundation staff to other leading researchers, deans, professors, Postdocs and … Keep reading
The two-day-workshop in Pretoria was a pre-event of the official launch of the Future Africa Campus and united three parallel workshops supporting (young) researchers to head for a transdisciplinary research program. The workshops were facilitated by the team of “Know Innovation”, which was an enriching experience. On the one hand, we gained great insights in … Keep reading
If you had asked me before February about Leverage Points, I would have answered, after a bit of contemplation, “Well…there is this project at Leuphana University and they work with the idea of Donnella Meadows about different sets of Leverage Points to transform society. And, of course connected to the project there are some faces … Keep reading
A Workshop on Systemic Constellation in Political-Environmental ContextsIf not in transformative research, where else can we experiment with alternative ways of knowledge production? The idea behind this question motivated me to share my experiences on two interactive sessions at the symposium on Real-World Laboratories in Karlsruhe.In their performance on transdisciplinary research by the Scientific Theatre … Keep reading
Written by Stefanie Albrecht and Stefan HilserOverview of the EventThe symposium in Karlsruhe in April 2018 was the final event for the 14 Real-world Laboratories (RwLs), also called BaWü Labs. This first laboratory ensemble for practice-oriented science on sustainability in Germany was funded for three years with 18 Mio. Euro by the federal state of … Keep reading
The Role of Making Connections in Creating Sustainability Transformations As researchers, we constantly think about making connections. Connections between different ideas and concepts, between science and practice as well as different disciplines. It is also the connections in systems, which are relevant. The inauguration days of the research project ‘Processes of Sustainability Transformations’ of the … Keep reading
The inauguration days for our research group combined a variety of things: discussions and getting to know one another, networking and presenting, good food and cosy evenings. However, the essence of all the activities were the people.Katrin Rehak-Nitsche, head of department of science and research at the Robert Bosch foundation puts it bluntly: „It is … Keep reading