Review Reading Class

The first IDK Reading Class EVER was a great success! Martiné van der Walt and Steffen Bruse welcomed the group and a couple of PIs at the RCC and guided us through their 3-hour-workshop on “Rethinking Research Topics and Processes through a Sustainability Science Perspecitive.” The focus was on individual and collective agency, systems intervention, and inter- and transdisciplinary research methods. Each participant (including PIs) was asked to test the 12 leverage points for sustainability transformation defined by Abeson et al. (see also https://leveragepoints.org) and explore their usefulness for their project. The resulting poster sessions inspired participants to think outside of disciplinary boxes and proved the 12-point-model’s potential to help to help structure individual projects and integrate new ideas, including work in the humanities.  But they also showed where a systems approach might eventually fail to grasp he complexities of a situation and overlook problematic power relations in a given context.

written by Kirsten Twelbeck