Professorship for International Sustainable Development and Planning

Organisational unit: Professoship

Organisation profile

The aim of our research at the professorship for International Sustainable Development and Planning (ISDP) is to make sound contributions to the international field of Sustainability Science and thus to advance it. To this end, we generate empirical findings that help to understand the causes of (un-)sustainability, that is, to unravel, elicit and comprehend systems of values, knowledge and institutions that foster and underpin sustainable transformations and human-nature relations.

Four main principles mark our research and its (ongoing) development: interdisciplinarity, collaboration, commitment with the science-society respectively -policy interfaces and responsibility.

Main research areas

We research how Nature’s Contributions to People (NCP) are used, valued and demanded by different social actors in multiple social-ecological contexts. In addition, we seek to understand how different systems of values, knowledge and institutions with regards to human-nature relations are changing in different social-ecological contexts and identify ways by which these changes can be redirected to facilitate human-nature connectedness. We also advance knowledge to determine which configurations of values, knowledge and institutions promote pathways towards sustainability.

 

Modus Operandi

Our research program is highly inter- and transdisciplinary as the main motivation is to understand social-ecological dynamics across scales in order to foster sustainability. To do so, we conduct place-based social-ecological research in different rural systems in Africa, Europe and Latin America, as well as, regional and global assessments.

In order to meet the inter- and transdisciplinary requirements of our research the team covers different disciplines, including environmental science, sustainability science, ecological economics, humanities, feminist studies or political ecology. Moreover, we work collaboratively with scientists from other disciplines as well as social actors outside academia. Important partners in these collaborations are some minorities and marginalized groups, such as Indigenous Peoples and local communities, people with disabilities, and people discriminated because their gender*.

As a research team, we have an active commitment with the science-society and science-policy interfaces. Accordingly, we engage with a diverse and broad range of societal actors and, for instance, in the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

Our daily research is guided by the conviction that it must be responsible. Responsibility means, in particular, responsibility towards society, towards our colleagues and collaborators, and towards ourselves. In our understanding, this principle strongly relates with a feminist ethos of care that we intend to practice steadily.

* refers to all non-male people, which also includes trans-gender, non-binary people and gender fluid people.

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. Dealing with availability and response expectations: Are older employees at an advantage and why?
  2. Finanzierung von Bürgerbeteiligung für Erneuerbare Energien als Aufgabe für kommunale Sparkassen
  3. Online-Trainings zur Stressbewältigung - eine neue Chance zur Gesundheitsförderung im Lehrerberuf?
  4. Analyis of a Potential Single and Combined Business Model for Stationary Battery Storage Systems
  5. Parental Smoking in the Vicinity of Children and Tobacco Control Policies in the European Region
  6. Combined pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy in the treatment of mild to moderate major depression?
  7. Ant seed predation, pesticide applications and farmers income from tropical multi-cropping gardens
  8. Challenges and solutions to establishing and sustaining citizen science projects in South Africa
  9. Changes in the Complexity of Limb Movements during the First Year of Life across Different Tasks
  10. Inductance Estimation Using an EKF for the Robust Control of PMSMs in the Presence of Saturation
  11. The age of the hominin fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, and the origins of the Middle Stone Age
  12. Application of Adaptive Element-Free Galerkin Method to Simulate Friction Stir Welding of Aluminum
  13. Berufliche Handlungsanforderungen im Fokus der Hochschuldidaktik eines inklusiven Sachunterrichts
  14. Relating to water, spaces, and other agents. On the journey behind Juliane Tübke’s project Weathering
  15. Dataset of physiological, behavioral, and self-report measures from a group decision-making lab study
  16. A Synthesis is Emerging between Biodiversity-Ecosystem Function and Ecological Resilience Research
  17. A feedback model combining individual and organizational determinants of small business innovation
  18. A framework for disentangling ecological mechanisms underlying the island species–area relationship
  19. Do Women on board of directors have an impact on corporate governance quality and firm performance?
  20. Evaluating the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of web-based indicated prevention of major depression