Fair Transitions is a new platform of Institutions for Open Societies (IOS) at Utrecht University, starting September 2022, involving more than 50 scholars. The aim of the platform is to radically rethink sustainable development and envision institutions for the future that safeguard not just ecological boundaries, but also boundaries of fair and just development – on equal and symmetrical terms. By facilitating an interdisciplinary dialogue among various faculties within Utrecht University, and with actors in society, the platform explores the question: How do institutions need to change in order to guarantee safe, inclusive and climate-resilient landscapes and social-ecological environments across the globe?

The basic assumption that underlies the platform is that environmental problems such as climate change are human or institutional problems, characterized by, or rather constitutive of, deeply unfair and unjust governance arrangements. In other words, we believe that existing governmental and market institutions must change and collaborate with informal, bottom-up institutions in new ways in order to achieve fairness and social justice, facing complex global challenges, such as climate change-related transformations that lead to shifts in people’s mobility, relationship between human and non-human species, and access, use and control of natural resources.

• dr. Julia Tschersich
• dr. Julie Fraser
• dr. ir. Janwillem Liebrand
• dr. Mucahid Bayrak
• Nicholas Polson

IMAGINE is an interdisciplinary research project (humanities, social sciences, design and arts) that will study cultural imaginaries of sustainability. Since some imaginaries become key stories that guide and legitimize actions taken by different societal actors, while others remain without influence, they are of great importance for the creation of possible futures. Considering the current global urgency of transitioning towards more sustainable societies, this influence makes them important to investigate.

• Nina Heidenstrøm

[urban interfaces] is a research platform for a critical investigation of urban interfaces for creative and participatory engagement at the crossing of academic research and creative practices. Focusing on mobile and situated media, arts, and performances, [urban interfaces] fosters critical reflections on, and interventions in, these socio-spatial and somatechnical activities and their shaping and staging of urban culture. 

[urban interfaces] is an initiative of the Department for Media and Culture Studies (MCW) and seeks collaboration with an expanding local and international network of academic and cultural partners. 

For more information, see urbaninterfaces.net.

• prof. dr. Nanna Verhoeff
• dr. Imar de Vries
• dr. Sigrid Merx
• dr. Michiel de Lange
• Tamalone van den Eijnden
• dr. Anastasia Hacopian PhD
• dr. Dan Hassler-Forest

Rick Dolphijn is PI in the HERA funded project FOOD@GATHER (2019-2022)

«FOOD2GATHER explores the relations between food and public spaces in the context of migration. Through a myriad of food-related practices it addresses the way people connect with others and the environment physically, socially, politically and symbolically. FOOD2GATHER aims to problematize food as a potential driver of opportunities for intercultural communication and interaction – and as a driver for inclusion and exclusion processes in European societies.

To broaden our understanding, FOOD2GATHER will build on and adapt the concept of ‘foodscapes’. Foodscapes are constructed places wherein food practices, values, meanings, and representations intersect with the material and environmental realities that sustain the experience of food. FOOD2GATHER, therefore, considers foodscapes as crucial agents in the construction of dynamic and reciprocal relationships in local communities in Europe today. We see foodscapes as socially, empirically and symbolically interlinked processes that are never fixed but that will develop throughout the project.

Through different but complementary ethnographic studies of public spaces in six European countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Norway), this project addresses the potentialities of foodscapes for creating (or not) new conditions for living together.”