Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Sustainability

The aim of the course is to provide students with an interdisciplinary foundation for engaging with sustainability challenges as wicked, complex and deeply uncertain societal issues in a troubled and changing world. The course introduces key concepts for understanding how sustainability challenges are shaped by conflicting values, multiple ways of knowing, power relations and emotional engagement. Students in the course come from diverse disciplinary backgrounds and choose one of the following specialisations: (i) marine sustainability, (ii) climate change and energy transition, or (iii) global societal challenges. This diversity constitutes a central resource for learning, while also requiring openness and willingness to engage with different perspectives and assumptions.

As the core course of the Master's programme in Sustainability, SDG309 develops students' capacity to remain engaged with complexity, indeterminacy and disagreement, and to approach sustainability challenges under conditions where certainty, control and definitive solutions are absent.

Core content of SDG309:

1. Sustainability challenges: The course provides an overview of major sustainability challenges, with emphasis on climate change and energy transition; marine sustainability; and global societal challenges.
2. Sustainability, values and situated knowledge: The course introduces sustainability as a contested and situated concept, shaped by competing values, normative assumptions and power relations, as well as moral and emotional engagement. Particular attention is given to how sustainability challenges are experienced and engaged with as lived issues, where knowledge, values and identities are intertwined.
3. Wicked problems, complexity and indeterminacy: Sustainability challenges are analysed as "wicked problems", characterised by complexity, uncertainty, non-linearity and indeterminacy.
4. Ways of knowing and interdisciplinarity in practice: Students learn how different ways of knowing contribute to the understanding and governance of sustainability challenges. They explore disciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches, with attention to differing standards of evidence, quality and validity.
5. Science, expertise and governance: Students reflect upon and critically analyse the role of science and expertise in sustainability-related decision-making and governance. Topics include the science-policy interface for complex and uncertain issues, co-production of knowledge, legitimacy and trust, as well as the responsibilities and limitations of expertise under conditions of uncertainty and contestation.
6. Case-based interdisciplinary work: Throughout the course, students work in interdisciplinary groups on concrete sustainability challenges. Through case-based work, students apply theoretical perspectives to empirical material, engage with relevant stakeholders and reflect on collaboration, problem framings across different ways of knowing, values and emotions.

Knowledge

On completion of the course, the student:

• has an overview of major sustainability challenges, in particular knowledge within climate change and energy transition; marine sustainability; and global societal challenges;
• has knowledge of sustainability as a contested and situated concept, shaped by conflicting values, power relations and normative assumptions;
• knows and understands concepts and theories that allows sustainability challenges to be analysed as wicked problems (including complexity, indeterminacy, uncertainty and disagreement);
• has knowledge of different ways of knowing, including their roles, limitations and interactions in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary sustainability contexts;
• understands the role of science and expertise in sustainability governance, including science-policy interfaces and processes of knowledge co-production;
• understands how knowledge, values and emotions are intertwined in the framing and engagement with sustainability challenges.

Skills

The student:

• can analyse concrete sustainability challenges using relevant theoretical perspectives related to wicked problems, boundary work and boundary objects, complexity, uncertainty, ignorance and indeterminacy;
• can work collaboratively in interdisciplinary groups, negotiating different problem framings, ways of knowing and standards of quality;
• can critically assess the strengths and limitations of different types of knowledge (including their own) in sustainability contexts;
• can be reflexive relative to their own positioning, assumptions and ways of knowing when working with sustainability challenges;
• can engage analytically with uncertainty, indeterminacy and the emotional dimensions of sustainability;
• can demonstrate their knowledge and their ability to perform critical analyses both in written and oral form

General competence

The student:

• can understand and communicate complex sustainability challenges in oral and written forms;
• can situate their own ways of knowing in interdisciplinary and contested sustainability contexts;
• can approach sustainability challenges in a reflexive, critical and creative ways