Highlights

  • Turning the classroom into a social movement

    The Urban Futures Studio turned its most recent Mixed Classroom course into a fictive social movement. Over the course of 10 weeks, students, policymakers, artists, and activists learned from and with each other about just transitions and social movements. The course ended with a public launch of the newly established Just Change! movement.

  • Overcoming transdisciplinary challenges: students, clients and educators learn together

    Utrecht University scientists and educators of today, as well as its student changemakers of tomorrow, are increasingly striving to produce new insights not only for society but also with society through a so-called transdisciplinary approach. But what kind of skills and competencies does this require? We talk to teachers from our Bachelor Global Sustainability Science pogramme.

  • A UU Living Lab carves the path to a zero waste campus

    Utrecht University plans to be Zero Waste by 2030. With research and teaching laboratories, restaurants, and hundreds of offices, this is no small task. Delving into the complexities of waste management on campus, insights from a ‘living lab’ connecting research, education and operations hope to shift the university’s waste management paradigm.

  • Students contribute to sustainable water management in the Utrecht region

    The many water bodies found across the Utrechtse Heuvelrug’s country estates offer a home to a great diversity of flora and fauna. Here lecturer Stefanie Lutz and Ivor de Baat from Utrechts Landschap talk about their collaboration. Students learn to conduct fieldwork and collect and interpret data while providing crucial information for sustainable water management in the area.

  • Karin Rebel appointed Professor of Sustainability Science & Education

    Karin Rebel has been appointed Professor of Sustainability Science & Education starting from 15 March 2023. The role combines innovation in challenge-based learning around inter- and transdisciplinary sustainability education with her research exploring the role of natural vegetation in climate.

  • How students, teachers and society can learn from each other for a sustainable future

    Society faces a multitude of complex sustainability challenges which require new ways of thinking and doing. Our Bachelor Global Sustainability Science helps students learn how to make their academic knowledge relevant for addressing real sustainability challenges faced by companies, NGOs or local governments.

  • Team CHARM-EU wins the first UU Team Award

    The first UU Team Award was awarded to the project revolving around the CHARM-EU Master Global Challenges for Sustainability, which tests didactic concepts around transdisciplinary challenge-based learning. The Master's, which within UU is embedded at the Copernicus Institute, offers hybrid education in which students and teachers work synchronously at five universities. It is the first-ever joint degree programme in a European Universities Initiative funded by the European Commission.

  • Imagined futures and real change: an interview with Joost Vervoort

    Joost Vervoort, Associate Professor of Transformative Imagination and lecturer on our Bachelor and Master programmes tells us about his research, activism through video games, and his teaching philosophy.