Inter-University Sustainability Challenge

Course goals

Content

All over the world, we face similar challenges in the places where we live. These challenges are major: How can we develop living environments that are affordable to all, while providing equal living standards? How can we adapt living environments to future hotter and wetter or drier climates? How do we ensure that development of such environments does not conflict with other major goals, such as biodiversity restoration and sustainable production of healthy food? These raise issues of equity and social inclusion in design, biodiversity-climate-livelihood trade-offs and links nature-inclusive design and natural processes.

At the same time, different concepts like "Environment", "Sustainability" and "Home" mean different things to different people. How we look at the world around us is crucial in designing a future we have not yet imagined. In this course, students from several study programmes at Utrecht University (the Netherlands), Wageningen University (the Netherlands), Eindhoven University (the Netherlands) and Nelson Mandela University (South Africa) will collaborate by bringing multiple disciplines together to analyse, compare and co-create opportunities to tackle local and global challenges in the places where we live, work and study.

Students will perform a deep analysis of a challenge in their living environment and work together in interdisciplinary teams with societal partners to propose opportunities to improve our living environments. Learning will be underpinned by a grounding in participatory design and research methodologies as well as in-demand skills such as systems thinking and futuring. The final result will be a product presented in a multimedia format and substantiated by a report written for a popular audience. 

The students will meet the lecturers and fellow students using innovative online learning tools such as the Virtual Classroom. The purpose of the inter-university collaboration is so we all meet people outside of our unique habitats and benefit from the expertise and perspectives others offer. At the same time, this collaboration will help reveal to the students from which knowledge, expertise, skills, perspectives and cultural aspects they approach the project themselves.