Transversal Theme: Climate and Environmental Sustainability

Group of young people protesting with signs. One sign says "There is no planet B"

This event brought together researchers across the School of Humanities and Social Science (HSS) working on Climate and Environmental Sustainability to collectively discuss and co-design how best to describe research areas, goals, projects, methods, and people working on related themes across HSS.

Agenda

12.30–13.15

Lunch

13.15–13.30

Brief Introduction

13.30­–14.45

Session 1 (45 minutes in moderated breakout groups asked to identify 5 to 10 research themes, followed by 30 minutes feeding back into main the group)

14.45–15.15

Coffee Break

15.15–16.30

Session 2 (45 minute break out groups focused on identifying common methods, resource/support needs, and funding opportunities, again followed by 30 mins of feeding back into main group)

16.30–17.00

Concluding Roundtable

17.00

Drinks & Canapes

We have five aims in mind:

Internal Connection: We want to connect people across departments and disciplines to create stronger links for exchanging knowledge and pursuing shared projects and, more broadly, to make our ongoing research, and future plans, more visible to each other.

External Visibility: We want to more communicate our research activities and profile to the outside world—to potential collaborators at other institutions, and funders.

Online Presence: To support the above goals, we want to create – as part of the new HSS communication strategy – a shared online resource and web-presence that will help to raise our external profile while also helping researchers internally in HSS (and UCAM more generally) to navigate this research space.

Building Towards an IRC: We want to begin a conversation to scope ideas for a Strategic Research Initiative (SRI) and—eventually—an Interdisciplinary Research Centre (IRC) in this space with a view to begin preparing an application next academic year (2025-2026). Which streams of research would be represented in this bid? Who would take leadership? What additional links would on want with academics in other Schools within the University?