Post on 12-Apr-2017
DIST centre and AAU’s
sustainability educations
Presentation 10 November 2015 at the conference:
Opening up new horizons: International perspectives on ESE
Ulrik Jørgensen, prof. Center for Design, Innovation and Sustainable Transitions
Aalborg University Copenhagen
1 Ulrik Jørgensen – Center for Design, Innovation and Sustainable Transitions
Overview of my presentation
• brief on Aalborg University
• DIST foundation and areas of engagement
• challenges: climate, resource consumption, growth,
social conflicts and disciplinarity
• alternative responses and their contributions
• educational programs at AAU
• impacts on professional practices, innovation and
societal strategies
2 Ulrik Jørgensen – Center for Design, Innovation and Sustainable Transitions
Aalborg University and its campuses
• founded in 1973 as a merger of existing local and
subsidiary institutions – all science fields present
• project based learning (PBL) has been the ’trade
mark’ covering half of the study time each semester
• fundamental change from focus on teaching to focus
on learning – a continuous challenge
• campuses also in Copenhagen and Esbjerg – a result
of a concentration and competition policy
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DIST center: staff and approach
• cross-faculty and -department cooperation with a common platform in science and technology studies (STS) – the lingua franca of the center
• research and knowledge building with a strong focus on and interest in outreach activities and cooperation with societal actors
• including approx. 50 academics with a variety of disciplinary background reaching from engineering and sociology to economy and ethnology
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Common ’theory’ of socio-materiality
• philosophy had questioned the role of technology as
has the 1990s technology assessment
• innovation theory demonstrated limitations to
economic theories of growth and change
• technology studies (STS) questioned the constructed
devide between the social and the material
• new approach to understanding disciplines, design
processes, sustainability, societal transitions, etc.
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Actor centered approach
• actor centered approach is core to understanding
how objects and practices are constituted and
performed (enacted)
• but actors also reflect past and present institutional
configurations that frame and set the stage for action
• actors re-configuring and engaging in new network
constellations within arenas of development are an
core to institutional change
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Outreach and focus on learning
• engagement with actors in society that experiment
with and support sustainable transitions
• cities, regions, new constellations of actors with
focus on change patterns of consumption and waste
• including companies, entrepreneurs, citizen groups
• focus on learning based on principles of project
based studies and stakeholder co-operation
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Areas of engagement - so far
• cityscapes and mobility to create livable spaces
• energy systems incl. consumption and ownership
• design with user involvement that improve products,
use practices and systems
• design of health and use comfort systems
• eco-food development from land to table
• construction of new markets, economic models and
valuations that support ecological transformation
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Areas of engagement – next steps
• develop a ’navigational approach’ to support open
ended transition processes
• enter cross-sector governance of critical
infrastructures that integrate water, energy, food, bio
poducts, and land use (the nexus perspective)
• take up inequality, marginalisation, exclusion ,
health, and issues related to migration and refugees
• develop visions for a sustainable societal foundation
beyond the neoliberal and nation state focus
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Sustainability challenges
• climate change presents an urgent
agenda for engaging in ways to
induce radical transitions
• making cases for reduced resource
consumption, energy and new social
practices
• a global challenge to economic,
social and environmental action
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Sustainability as discourse
• to be ’sustainable’ is the new speak in town – it can’t
be negated
• life cycle assessments, climate models present strong, but partial metrics
• a discourse on the legitimacy of development
pathways rather than a macro-metric
• a transformative challenge to professions, research
disciplines, and societal ideologies
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Dilemmas of growth
• growth rates generally are going down
• increased inequality
• general wellfare loss
• energy and resources
spurred growth
• leads to fundamental
policy contradictions
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Social uprising and refugees
• several Middle East, Asian and African conflict
zones are related to water, draught and climate
• new political extremist in Europa are the retult of
inequality and migration pressures
• water conflicts will eventually result in extended
refugee problems
• besides production led (over)consumption this may
be the most important future sustainability challenge
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A scattered world representation
• foundational problem of university disciplines lies in the need for isolating research objects
• science is not just filling ’white’ spots on a knowledge map – a trade-off between gains and reduction
• a ’scattered’ representation of the world (Cartwright)
• crucial for dominant professions of engineering, economy, management, planning and policy
• challenge postnormal science and interdisciplinarty
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Technological and institutional fix’es
• green growth - a dominant efficiency response
• new concepts – ’cradle to cradle’ and ’circular economic’ and ’sharing economy’ simplify
• commodification and sectoralisation – dominant policy on infrastructures and services
• sustainability – natural science and technology topic?
• with the ’antropocene’ and following e.g. ’Tensions of Europe’ humanities is waking up
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Translating ’environment’ …
• sustainability can be seen as the second and
extended wave – environment and energy in the
1970s were the first
• detailed study of institutional framings of the uptake
of the first wave at DTU and AAU in Denmark
• local codes of meaning translated the challenge into
either chemical pollution, planning using EIA and
models, or production management issues
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Four response practices observed
• efficiency parameters – integration into existing
disciplines like enzymes, recycling, innovation
• external societal perspective – broad discussions and
projects on impacts, ethics and politics
• particular new disciplines – EIA, energy modelling,
design courses, ecology and resilience
• transformative – engagement in project assignments
and adjusted teaching content and theory reflections
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Sustainability focused educations
• some AAU programs have sustainable change and transitions as their core focus
• ’Sustainable Design’ (b+m) – socio-material design, user involvement, new views on systems, navigating open terrains, challenge: classic engineering disciplines
• ’Sustainable Cities’ (m) – impact assessment, energy system modelling, challenge: new roles in planning
• ’Sustainable Transitions’ (pm) – professionals, institutional regimes, navigating sustainable transitions in open terrains, market construction, change agency
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Other educational uptakes
• other programs have sustainability as an important topic
• ’Sustainable Biotechnology’ (b+m) – biomaterials, biorefining, genetic engineering, challenge: sustainability as navigational and ethical perspective
• ’Integrated food studies’ (m) – food chain management, organic food production, kitchen strategies, nutrition, challenge: health aspects
• ’Production Engineering’ (b+m) – elements of sustainable production and management
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Still pending options
• several of the engineering programs open for sustainability as a perspective in projects supported by some general courses, but in the line with ’efficiency’ and ’add-on’
• ’Social Work’ and ’Refugee Studies’ are social science programs still lacking sustainability
• ’Lighting Design and ’Mediology’ are integrated programs with options in project
• still a lot of challenges and a lot to be done!
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Program structure and core disciplines
• two main challenges comes from:
- lack of engagement with progress in learning
- research disciplines still dominate teaching
• project based learning, progression and semester coordination is core
• cost of education ’issue’ – break even between cousework and projects: 60 students
• dilemma for educators between ’hook’ and ’renewal’
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Implications for innovation and policy
• contemporary and innovation policy is technology
centered and focus on growth
• dispite the dismantling of the linear model by the
history of technology and innovation economics
• strategic research is focusing on commercial actors
• in a transition perspective societal functions need to
be made the structural backbone of innovation
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Implications for disciplines
• universities are basically conservative when it
comes to faculty and disciplines
• dispite their role in knowledge provision and
innovation
• contradiction of importance for new cross-
disciplinary activities
• sustainability in all its ’weakness’ is a challenge to
the structure of professions and knowledge
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