20151110 nme dag-dist_ulrik jørgensen

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


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


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


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.


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


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


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


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


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


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


Dilemmas of growth

• growth rates generally are going down

• increased inequality

• general wellfare loss

• energy and resources

spurred growth

• leads to fundamental

policy contradictions


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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!


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’


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


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


20151110 nme dag-dist_ulrik jørgensen

Environment

Transcript of 20151110 nme dag-dist_ulrik jørgensen