Applied Sustainability Studies

About the course package

The course package includes the following courses:

Actors and Strategies for Change: From Local to Global Initiatives, 7.5 credits

With a growing number of unsustainable environmental, economic, and social trends, how can different actors work for sustainable alternatives? How can we develop capacities, strategies, and tactics that achieve lasting and real changes in the local and global world?

To achieve a more vibrant and participatory sustainable development, there is a need for great changes, both on the systemic and individual levels. These changes can take the form of fast-moving revolutions, but can also be more reformist initiatives, such as social entrepreneurship in businesses or taking part in local politics. In the course, different actors and their strategies for change, globally and locally, are critiqued and analysed through discussions with guest lecturers and in workshops with fellow students. In the last part of the course, you work on an in-depth project, which builds on the discussions and insights gained during the first part of the course.

The course is offered at CEMUS, Centre for Environment and Development Studies, in a student-led educational model where students actively contribute to shaping the courses and their content, creating a student-centred learning environment.

Technology, Power and the Future of Humanity, 7.5 credits

In what ways can technological innovations contribute to the work with and for sustainability? Which technological and human future scenarios are probable and desirable?

The course introduces idea-historical backgrounds and historical and current examples of the relationships between society and technology. Different themes, such as artificial intelligence, high and low-tech climate technologies, gender and intersectional perspectives, health and access to medical technologies, and social media technologies, among others, are used to highlight and critically discuss how technologies are connected to sustainability.

The course process also focuses on the interdisciplinary dialogue where technological and natural scientific perspectives meet philosophical, power, political, critical, and cultural perspectives. Guest lectures, seminars, literature, and examination aim to create reflection and a better understanding of our relationship to our surrounding technological world.

The course is offered at CEMUS, Centre for Environment and Development Studies, in a student-led educational model where students actively contribute to shaping the courses and their content, creating a student-centred learning environment.

Climate and Leadership: Power, Politics and Culture, 15 credits

Climate change leadership is often mentioned in both news media and by politicians themselves, but what does it entail? What kind of knowledge and skills define a climate change leader, and how can they be learned? What kind of political, cultural, and psychological resources are lacking in present initiatives?

This course discusses the fundamentals of effective and functioning climate change leadership from a global perspective. Starting from an analysis of how the climate has changed during the planet's long geological history and how it plays a central role in the life of the biosphere, the course looks at why there are comparatively few effective responses to the issues we are facing.

Then the societal and cultural effects of climate change are discussed, looking at how the use of fossil fuels has transformed modern societies and cultures and taking into account broader perspectives such as ethics, justice, or gender. With the knowledge gained during the first part of the course, a framework for a working climate change leadership is critically looked at from a political, power, and societal perspective.

The course Applied Sustainability Studies is offered at CEMUS, Centre for Environment and Development Studies, in a student-led educational model where students actively contribute to shaping the courses and their content, creating a student-centred learning environment.