24. MARCH 2020 / JLEVENTONThis post is written by Julia Leventon, Ioana Duse, Felix Beyers, Tamara Schaal and Josefine Laudan. They work together as a research group at Leuphana University, headed by Julia. The projects they work on are primarily focused on systems change for sustainability, within the food and textiles systems. Julia is currently in the Czech Republic with her family (and … Keep reading
Food forests address a number of climate change and sustainability challenges. They mimic natural forest ecosystems with a majority of plants being edible such as fruits, nuts, vegetables, mushrooms, and medicinal plants. In the U.S., more than 90 food forests and forest gardens exist.In Arizona, there is a growing community of practitioners and scholars interested … Keep reading
Last spring in 2019, I travelled back to Mexico to collect data for the case study of my doctoral project. As I am investigating the learning component (processes, outcomes and conditions) of the sustainability transformation of the Mexican textile-fashion industry, I wanted to approach projects and initiatives working in this field. Nevertheless, it has been … 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
“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
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