Teaching

Timeline

Academic year 2021-22, 22-23: development & piloting of courses.

Academic year 2023-24 and onward: fully operational

Theme: Sustainability transitions in past and present

Sustainability transitions pose some of the most urgent challenges to societies today as well as in the (distant) past. Transitions in energy systems, in food production, in the use of natural resources, or in the change from agrarian to urban and industrial societies always play out in longer spans of time. Current debates on sustainability challenges and envisioned sustainability transitions thus benefit from professionals who have robust historical knowledge and are familiar with long-term comparative perspectives. These abilities will allow professionals to see through the complexities of the socio-economic and socio-technical dynamics that are involved in such transitions.

This minor will equip our students with the capacity and skills to analyze sustainability transitions of various kinds in a temporal (i.e. inter-generational) framework. By exploring sustainability transitions in greater depth and comparing methodological and theoretical approaches, students will learn to disentangle the complexity of sustainability challenges and to synthesize various perspectives. They will acquire knowledge about the use of dynamic models of interaction between environmental, demographic, economic, political and technological forces and become familiar with concepts and theories of path dependence, resource curse, carrying capacity and tipping points. Students will not just passively study examples of sustainability transitions in the past and present, but also apply their knowledge to specific cases in written reports, scenario-modelling and case-based games.

More information:

• More on education in the EWUU Alliance (Eindhoven University of Technology, Wageningen University & Research, Universiteit Utrecht en Universitair Medisch Centrum Utrecht)
• More on Alliance exchange courses