How transdisciplinary processes and stakeholder engagement can help to sustainably shape global futures

Date and time: 9. June 10:00 - 11:00

Location: HS 62.01 Alumni-Hörsaal, Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz

Kind of Event: Lecture in englisch

Description: Covid-19 is just adding to the portfolio of greatest challenges our society faces presently and in future. Such complex ill-defined problems affect the whole human-environment system and require both big picture thinking and focused perspectives to be better understood. Here, the question of who decides on global futures, and how, becomes a key issue. I argue that collaboration-based system understanding needs to be the basis for any form of future-oriented development strategy and, particularly, the generation of supportive interventions and innovations. Approaches of science-practice collaboration such as transdisciplinarity which aim at stakeholder engagement open a wide range of possibilities for knowledge integration. Embedded in system understanding, the identification of vulnerability spaces (e.g., agro-food chain, digital ecosystems, rural communities) and their transformation into innovation niches becomes a key success-factor. This can be considered as a crucial aspect in transformative learning. But are we fit for those challenges and do we, as universities, provide the appropriate learning environments and competences and what would the implications of a transdisciplinary learning environment be? In tackling those issues, highly relevant show cases from food security and digital transformation will provide insights regarding the design of the underlying knowledge systems and -processes.

Presenter: Gerald Steiner is a systems- and complexity scientist. His research focuses on multilevel innovation systems and communication- and collaboration processes in the context of a sustainable transition of complex coupled human-environment-systems. Here, he is particularly interested in innovation niches and adaptive capacities in relation to vulnerabilities and systemic risk. His current research interest is to better understand (1) societal grand challenges, such as sustainable resource management, pathways to global food security, environmental crises, one-health, and planetary health; (2) collaboration-based innovation and entrepreneurial activities as potential system interventions for sustainable development; (3) competences for complex problem solving; (4) transdisciplinarity theory and -methodology.