We would like to cordially invite you to the LRN Summer School “Doing Justice! Doing Just This! Understanding justice in transdisciplinary and transformative research” hosted by the Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development (IOER) in Dresden, Germany, June 28th – 29th 2023.
Transdisciplinary and transformative research (TTR) seeks to address pressing and complex sustainability problems by bringing together academic and societal partners. In doing so, TTR aims to co-produce new types of knowledge and transform the ways in which such knowledge is used in society. However, TTR might as well reproduce or create new social, economic and environmental injustices if it lacks concepts and methods to reflect upon and address justice. These concern all stages and aspects of the research process – from preliminary ideation to ex-post evaluation, from project management to practical experimentation, from interaction formats to process designs. If unattended, their diverse justice implications may run the risk of ultimately exacerbating divides e.g. within or between species (non-/human), social groups (gender, class, ethnicity, religion, age, ability, etc.), urban and rural communities, or between the Global South and the Global North.
Such challenges urge for reflexivity to acknowledge the bright and dark sides of transformations and to engage with the concept of justice and its implications for TTR. We need to ask:
- What are “just” transformations and how to enable them?
- How can TTR methods contribute to reflexivity and depth in terms of just transformations?
- How to ensure reciprocity and diversity in research processes in support of justice?
- How to define and apply ethical reflection criteria in the research process?
To reflect upon and deepen our collective understandings of justice as applied to TTR for sustainability transformation, we invite you to a two day postdoctoral summer school organised by the Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development (IOER) in Dresden, Germany, in collaboration with the Leibniz Research Network “Knowledge for Sustainable Development”. This interdisciplinary training and networking event provides an excellent opportunity for engaged post-doc researchers to learn about, and co-develop new robust TTR approaches that address aspects of justice comprehensively. We will explore this through a mix of lectures, creative formats and group work, involving the senior international experts Martin Savransky, Guido Caniglia and Saurabh Arora.
To learn more about the LRN Summer School and submit your application, please visit the LRN website!
Key dates
March 15th 2023 – Application submission deadline
Early-April – Anticipated notification of application acceptance
Early-April – Registration opens
April 30th 2023 – Registration deadline
June 28th – June 29thLRN Summer School