Registration for ICSD 2020 is open! Registration is completely free for all.

The deadline to register is September 16th, 2020 at 5:00pm EDT.

The International Conference on Sustainable Development (ICSD) provides a forum for academia, government, civil society, UN agencies, and the private sector to come together to share practical solutions to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

ICSD has 14 sessions you can attend; 10 “Plenary and Parallel” sessions and 4 “Poster Sessions.” Each has a separate registration window; you are welcome to register for as many sessions as you like.

Our principal investigator, Giulia will be attending the conference. We can't wait to share some interesting insights with you!

Find out more information here.

u.lab: Leading From the Emerging Future

An introduction to leading profound social, environmental and personal transformation.

In the past year, we have witnessed unprecedented disruption. Climate strikes, the COVID-19 pandemic and global protests against racial injustice all point to a pressing need for societal renewal. To catalyze this renewal we need to learn not from the past, but from a future wanting to be born. How to activate our capacity to lean into the emerging future may well be the most important leadership challenge of our time. How do you cultivate curiosity, compassion and courage in the face of prejudice, anger and fear? How do you step into action for the well-being of all?

This course is an introduction to a method called Theory U, developed at MIT, for leading such change in business, government, and civil society contexts worldwide. u.lab will guide you in applying Theory U to an issue that matters to you, building your capacity to lead transformative change in the process. You will do so with fellow change-makers locally and around the world.

Join us as we co-pioneer new approaches to today’s most important social and environmental challenges.

Find more about the information here.

We have been presenting two preliminary results of the TrUST’s activities on the two tracks:

about Inter/Trans-Disciplinary research: “Transdisciplinarity for Urban Sustainability Transition: where and how is it being made possible?”, by Dr Giulia Sonetti, Prof. Mauro Sarrica, Dr Laura Norton.

Please find here the PPT we presented!

about Inter/Trans-Disciplinary Education: “The urban transition curriculum: Preliminary outcomes from a collaborative learning workshop with international inter- and transdisciplinary sustainability practitioners and educators”, by Dr Giulia Sonetti and Dr Antje Disterheft.

Please find here the PPT we presented!

More on the conference: http://isdrsconference.org/

COVID19: Where are we going? Where do YOU want humanity to go?

Imagine URBAN LIFE SOLUTIONS for our world putting in practice your positive ideas to improve current conditions.

Take part into 2 NEW COMPETITIONS proposed by Non Architecture!

As a reaction to the present conditions around the World, we decided to seek new ideas connected to the new phase of life Covid19 is requesting us.

In HEALING competition we challenge you to come up with Alternative Designs for Pandemic Cities, in the usual Non Architecture fashion:
https://www.nonarchitecture.eu/healing/

In SOCIAL DISTANCING Housing Block competition we would like seeing your ideas connected with the specific topic of living spaces:
https://www.nonarchitecture.eu/social-distancing/

Considering the present situation around the World, we decided to drop the registration fee for the SPECIAL REGISTRATION PERIOD by 30%, so now you can enter ONE COMPETITION only for 30 EUROS.
If you decide to enter 2 COMPETITIONS, you get 50% of the registration fee of the second one. In the special registration period entering both competitions costs 45 EUROS.
Please refer to our website for further information!

The SPECIAL REGISTRATION PERIOD is open from 01 to 17 May, so hurry up and do not miss the opportunity!

The TrUST project (Politecnico di Torino), together with the H2020 SHAPE-ID project, organise a two-day Unconference on inter/trans-disciplinary (ITD) educational tools and approaches that can support and improve sustainability education in the realm of urban transitions.

The Unconference will be held on 17th and 18th February 2020 at the UNESCO Heritage site of the Valentino Castle in Turin, Italy.

The two days will see an initial and final set of international keynotes focusing on the new learning paradigms for sustainability education, from primary schools to tertiary education. There will be two parallel sessions: an expert meeting (by invitation) will produce a written mission on the “education for urban sustainability” challenge, exploring what kind of inter/trans-disciplinary (ITD) educational tools and approaches can support and improve sustainability education in the realm of urban transitions. and the world-cafè sessions(for everyone) will let the participants turning up to self-manage their own burning questions, listen to those of others, participate in a lot of discussions on ITD education experiences.

  The main goal of the Unconference is to bring people together who are interested in improving and innovating their own (and indeed others’) ITD perspectives, and who are currently or have recently been involved in projects relating the transformative education towards a global citizenship concept.

 We will analyse Inter/Trans-Disciplinary (ITD) educational models and approaches that support sustainable urban transformation, as research addressing SDG 4 – Quality education and SDG 11 – Make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable and the Horizon 2020 European societal challenges. More info can be found here.

The European Roundtable for Sustainable Consumption and Production (ERSCP) is one of Europe's most remarkable conferences in its field and has taken place periodically since 1994. ERSCPs favour discussions about the key issues in sustainable consumption and production; the exchange of thoughts, knowledge, experiences and SCP proposals; and the creation of a European (also worldwide) community of research and practice in sustainable consumption and production.

The main goal of the ERSCPs is to encourage discussion amongst stakeholders involved in sustainable consumption and production: businesses, public institutions, universities, institutes and research centres, NGOs, SMEs, professional associations, decision-makers, etc.

The transition to a circular Europe is an opportunity to transform our production and consumption and make it more sustainable. The European commission defined the EU action plan for circular Economy: Closing the loop, which aims at being instrumental in reaching the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, in particular Goal 12 of ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns. Emphasis is given to the role of designing of both production and consumption patterns moreover the sustainability of the products and services delivered to the market. The theme is structured around the tracks of consumption, circular economy, industry and business and education, considering cross cutting tracks transdisciplinarity, innovation, design and policy as they are crucial to any transformation to a sustainable production and consumption society.

More info can be found here.

Also, check out TrUST's involvement in the conference:

“Quantitative Assessment of Energy Consumption at the Urban Scale: the Ecological Footprint of a University Campus”, Sonetti, G.1, Favaro, S., Genta, C., Fracastoro, G. V., Lombardi, P. Abstract accepted for the 19th European Roundtable for Sustainable Consumption and Production (ERSCP 2019) Institute for Sustainability Science and Technology, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, 15-18 October 2019.

“Enhancing the Accountability and Comparability of Different Campuses’ Energy Profiles Through an Energy Clusters Approach”, Sonetti, G., Chelleri, L., Kikuta, K. Abstract accepted for the 19th European Roundtable for Sustainable Consumption and Production (ERSCP 2019) Institute for Sustainability Science and Technology, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, 15-18 October 2019.

The International Conference on Sustainable Development (ICSD) provides a forum for academia, government, civil society, UN agencies, and the private sector to come together to share practical solutions to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

More info can be found here.

“This year’s International Conference on Sustainable Development will be the most important and historic yet! Not only will the science and policy be at the cutting edge; the conference will take place on multiple campuses around the world, making it a truly global event. ICSD will host students from around the world, top scientists, and world leaders from politics to government to the UN. I urge everybody interested in sustainable development – the great challenge of our age – to come to ICSD. Alas, space is limited, but we’ll pack in all that we can!” - Professor Jeffrey Sachs

Check out TrUST's involvement in the conference:

“Can theory-U be a valid model to design a university course for transdisciplinary SDGs education? A retrospective view on the “Value Creator” course in the Bachelor of Business Administration at Windesheim Honours College”, Giulia Sonetti & María García Alvarez. Abstract accepted at the 2019 International Conference on Sustainable Development (ICSD), Columbia University in New York City, USA, September 24-25, 2019.

“The Italian path toward SDGs implementation: a first mapping exercise”, Giulia Sonetti, Caterina Barioglio, Daniele Campobenedetto. Abstract accepted at the International Conference on Sustainable Development (ICSD), Columbia University in New York City, USA, September 24-25, 2019.

The 2019 International Transdisciplinarity Conference took place September 10th through 13th in Gothenburg, Sweden. Hosted by MISTRA Urban Futures, the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences, and the University of Gothenburg, the meeting focused on the theme of “Joining Forces for Change.”

Our societies are facing critical points in their development, where large challenges are becoming increasingly difficult to handle. Numerous conflicts and complexities are surfacing – to which we can see societies responding with fragmentation, intolerance and exclusion. One way to address such developments is through societal transformation processes that implicitly include a variety of interest groups, stakeholders and organisations. Transdisciplinary (TD) research is one approach that focuses specifically on co-producing and integrating knowledge and expertise from a variety of sources, including communities, research, cities and businesses. It is an approach that is driven by the need to create processes where values and transformations towards a more just and sustainable society are openly debated.

The aim of this conference, Joining Forces for Change, is to bring together actors from different professional mandates, disciplines and sectors to engage and discuss practical examples and case studies that approach societal transformation through boundary breaking collaboration. The conference invites practitioners and researchers from government and administrative organisations and agencies, interest groups from community and business, and researchers and students from across the university. The overall focus is on what we can learn from our collaborative experiences, case studies and practices regarding wider societal transformation, methodological innovations and theoretical development. We will specifically search for “sites for change” in terms of spaces, practices and learnings where TD research and co-production play a crucial role.

Visit here for more info.

Also, check out TrUST's involvement in the conference:

“Storytelling as a Transdisciplinary Tool for Disentangle Local Energy Challenges”, Giulia Sonetti, Ruth Mourik, Rosie Robinson. Abstract accepted for the International Transdisciplinarity Conference 2019, Gothenburg, Sweden, 10-13 September 2019.

“Transdisciplinarity & SDGs: which Strategies for Academic Institutions Working on Cities?” Giulia Sonetti, Olivia Bina, Marta Varanda, Carlo Sessa, Igor Campillo, Giulio Verdini6 Josefine Fokdal, Katrin Padaam. Abstract accepted for the International Transdisciplinarity Conference 2019, Gothenburg, Sweden, 10-13 September 2019.

“Legit Failz: Training academia in techniques of improvisational theatre”, Marius Korsnes, Sophia Efstathiou, Sven Veine, Martin Loeng, Kristoffer Nergård, Giulia Sonetti. Abstract accepted for theInternational Transdisciplinarity Conference 2019, Gothenburg, Sweden, 10-13 September 2019.

The SIEV, the Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture and the Educational Architecture Structure of Syracuse of the University of Catania promote this conference aimed at analyzing the relationship between the fundamentals of the economic-estimation discipline and the most current issues of the territorial government.

Theoretical and methodological aspects will be addressed, also with respect to the progressive ability of our discipline to capture, with the progress of its operational tools, the external effects of territorial, cultural and environmental policies.

In particular, it will be the occasion for a comparison between systems of knowledge, on the epistemological roots of evaluation and on the validity of the economic-estimative paradigm with respect to the most important challenges to which the social system is called to respond in a climate, the current one, which could be defined as the "age of change".

Check here for more info.

Radical socio-economic and cultural changes have changed the perception of the past few years of the main issues of life in common - from the environmental to that of social solidarity - and impoverished the scale of shared values ​​by inverting, even on the most important themes, the order of priorities.

 A widespread axiological disorder and a general ethical disorientation erode trust in institutions democratic; the sustainability of economic development and the tension towards a more equitable distribution of the resources, do not fill political agendas. One of the scientific assumptions is questioned characterize our discipline for its civil commitment: economic justice as a perspective value judgment regulation.

The many evidences of this drift focus on the debate on the role that evaluation can play in recovery of the harmony between the Earth and the Cities, which our discipline interprets in the synthesis between values ​​and prices, state and market, stocks and flows, present and future, value and wealth.

Check out TrUST's involvement in the conference:

“The value creation in our “Regime d’historicité””, Giulia Sonetti, Patrizia Lombardi. Abstract presented at the SIEV – Italian Society of Estimate and Evaluation, congress on “Scienza delle valutazioni: Strutture naturali, infrastrutture tecnologiche, sovrastrutture culturali”, Siracusa, 11-12 July 2019.

Every year, AESOP holds its Annual Congress, hosted by one of member universities. Congresses are a wide platform of exchange in the fields of research, education and practice in planning. They usually run around 20 thematic tracks and host outstanding invited speakers. Find out more info here.

Contemporary cities and territories face significant challenges – natural disasters due to climate change impacts, ecological crises, growing socio-economic unrest, global migration, political rifts including a rise of right wing factions, ambitious public works and mega-projects – all of which require new capacities in dealing with such individual and multiple groupings of such challenging and profound changes.

It is a matter of fact that at international level a discourse if not a condition of transition is pervading sectors and societies. This discourse points to alternative patterns and solutions to many of the challenges faced. A quickly changing scenario requires forms of planning, both locally and globally, which bear the capacity to support and manage mutable urban and environmental conditions. In fact, although cities do incessantly change, policy-makers and institutions are never fully prepared to respond to complex and risky situations, as well as relying on planning and policy tools which are often outdated; in addition, also existing theoretical frameworks, concepts, cognitive abilities and approaches become ineffective or outmoded.

Each unintended or unanticipated change comes as a break to existing social, political, and administrative routines and yet is may be anticipated that mechanisms of collective reflection and action will be generated. The congress invites scholars and practitioners to present and discuss case-studies of cities and projects that have engaged in meeting challenging situations – supporting transitions in urban contexts. Specifically, it is aimed at offering an understanding of the forms of knowledge, concepts, tools, and skills needed to plan and address transition. Furthermore, it seeks to explore whether (and how) managing such changes has brought any overall reconsideration of the city design model and towards more general institutional reconfigurations.

The conference is co-organized by the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU) and the Universitat Jaume I in Castelló (UJI) and continues the debate started two years ago in Castelló de la Plana, where the central theme of the conference was “New Competences in the Area of Sustainability and University Social Responsibility”. The central theme of this second international conference is “Engineering Education towards Sustainability: Approaches for Institutionalization and Teaching Implementation”.

More info can be found here.

In a world deluged by social realities, change is an absolute necessity. Such change has found its way to European Higher Education Area, affected teaching objectives, pedagogies, and knowledge transmission. With the mission to help learners to create their capability profiles, this change visualizes graduates who can be absorbed easily by ever-evolving industries. To this aim, new active learning methodologies and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have been introduced and applied. These changes started to appear in classrooms in the era that also fosters social values such as Sustainable Development Goals and Conscious Social Responsibilities more than ever, striving to build an equitable world.

Education in such a time then becomes a multifaceted and complex phenomenon. Therefore, constant communication and continuous reflection on needs, challenges, and interventions from practitioners, educators, and industry representatives seem necessary. We believe localized and contextualized experiences that shaped by specific academic cultures and education systems equip us better in meeting the urgent demands of this century.

Check out TrUST's involvement in the conference:

Plenary session on “The Challenge of SDG Integration Into Current University Curricula” by our principal investigator, Giulia Sonetti.

Despite the fact that research on sustainable development is important, and it delivers decision-making tools for future oriented action and for a sustainable society, there is at present a need to strenghten and accelerate the initiatives from higher education institutions in this key area. It is against this background that the Symposium “Accelerating the Implementation of Sustainable Development in Research Programmes” is being organised by the Inter-University Sustainable Development Research Programme, the World Sustainable Development Research and Training Centre, the European School of Sustainability Science and Research, the Italian Network of Universities for Sustainable Development (Italy), the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (Germany) and the Politecnico di Torino (Italy) in cooperation with a number of institutions of higher education active in this field.

Click here for more info.

The Symposium will focus on the means to integrate, promote or otherwise catalyse the implementation of research on sustainable development at higher education institution, assisting them in their efforts to implement the Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and will contribute to the further development of this central topic. The Symposium is part of the “Accelerating Sustainable Development Series”, which consists of three related events on sustainable development with a focus on research (Turin, 1st-2nd July 2019), teaching (Stockholm, 9th-10th September 2019) and on campus activities (Spain, 2nd-3rd December 2019).

Check out TrUST's involvement in the conference:

“Sustainability Education via Problem- and Project-Based Learning”, Caterina Barioglio, Giulia Sonetti, Elena Todella, Chiara Genta. Abstract presented at the symposium "Accelerating the Implementation of Sustainable Development in Research", Politecnico di Torino, Turin. 4-5 June 2019.

“Telling the story of a greening academia: sustainable waste management and behavioural surveys at Politecnico di Torino, IT”, Giulio Cerino Abdin, Debora Fino, Chiara Genta, Patrizia Lombardi, Alberto Poggio, Giulia Sonetti, Paolo Tamborrini, Tonia Tommasi. Abstract presented at the symposium "Accelerating the Implementation of Sustainable Development in Research", Politecnico di Torino, Turin, 4-5 June 2019.

The 15th International Conference of Sociocybernetics will take place in the historical building of Palazzo Volponi and will be hosted by the Department of Communication Sciences, Humanities and International Studies: History, Cultures, Languages, Literatures, Arts, Media of the University of Urbino Carlo Bo.

“Dark Ages 2.0”: Social Media And Their Impact

In 2009 the ISA Research Committee 51 on Sociocybernetics hosted its annual conference in Urbino. The topic of the conference was the impact of the, then emerging, social media technologies on society. In the call, the “web 2.0” turn was explicitly associated to the advent of the printing press. The title of the conference was Modernity 2.0: emerging social media technologies and their impact. Along the line of visionary founding fathers of cybernetics and systems theory, the call solicited interdisciplinary contribution to explore the possibilities and tackling the challenges of a “new extraordinary change that we can barely describe today”.

A decade later, having witnessed the first impact of social media on society, it is about time to call for a new sociocybernetic forum to reflect on what we learned so far and the future perspectives.

The anticipated disruptive potentials of digital and social media unleashed on our society but the outcomes appear to be darker than what envisioned by scholars ten years ago. The entire industry is heavily concentrated in the hands of few organizations (Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft). Our mediated private and public conversations increasingly take place on powerful platforms owned by private organizations that, in a classic feedback loop, leverage these data to target advertisements tailored to our tastes and preferences. Contents on these platforms are sorted and filtered by proprietary algorithms that prioritize most engaging contents. Traffic to news source is increasingly driven by these algorithms and so are their revenues. For the first time in history, a handful of global private organizations are more powerful and rich than an entire country. At the same time, their management appears unable to address problematic issues such as misinformation and disinformation spreading rampant on social media platforms and messaging apps. The goal of making the “world more open and connected” comes with unintended consequences. Billions of people interacting in an unprecedented complex mediated digital environment proved to be hard to govern even for the owner of the platform itself.

Once again, the original issues of steering and controlling at the roots of cybernetics seems to be a core concept to understand a society where human beings increasingly interact through and with machines. The dialectic between control of this platforms (and lack of thereof) is central to face some of the main challenges of contemporary society. The exploitation of behaviours and individual choices, of contents generated and shared by users feed the algorithms and create the internal order. And, at the same time, the variety produced by individuals is used to increase the internal complexity of the system itself. Visible permanent public conversations and interactions are increasingly scrutinized and analyzed to get a real time pulse of the public opinion. As a result, these real time quantified attention indicators become a target worth to be hacked through unauthentic users and behaviours aimed at inflating likes, shares and reaches of certain contents and ideas. In a quintessential exemplification of the effects of self-observation in social systems, the public opinion observed through the distorted mirror of social media affects citizen opinions and behaviors. The whole misinformation and disinformation issue filed under the “fake news” label calls into account the role played by the observer and the divisiveness, pointed out by Heinz von Foerster, brought by those claiming to speak the Truth. Claude Shannon’s original concept of information as a function of the probabilities help to explain why made up news tend to travel fast and spread quicker than legitimate news stories. Furthermore, Luhmann’s description of the codes that differentiate functional systems in modern society supports the idea of a co-existence of multiple different perspective that goes beyond the distinction between true and false (or the domain of the system of science).

The goal of this conference is therefore to bring scholars together to explore, within a sociocybernetic approach, the issues at stake.

More info can be found here.

The Presencing Foundation Programme is a 4 day intensive introduction to concepts and practices of Theory U, a social technology for helping to bring about profound innovation and change. Theory U is being applied around the world by individuals, organizations and in multi-sector initiatives generating breakthrough possibilities around pressing organizational and societal issues.

The focus of this method is on sensing and actualising emerging future opportunities, both individually and collectively. In this program you will learn how to sense and seize future opportunities and how to connect to the deeper journey of your personal and professional life in order to become a more effective leader and change-maker in your work environment.

The program will also incorporate insights about applying Theory U to transforming business, society and self from Otto Scharmer and Katrin Käufer’s new book, Leading from the Emerging Future: From Ego-System to Eco-System Economies (2013).

This four-day experiential workshop is for leaders and teams at all levels. It introduces a collective leadership methodology for sensing and facilitating profound innovation and change both within organizations and across societal systems. A large portion of the Presencing workshop is dedicated to case clinics, where participants will apply what they are learning to challenges and projects in their own work. Participants will benefit the most from this workshop by coming with a concrete project or challenge that you are working on and/or by attending with one or more colleagues/ stakeholders. If you work in a consultant or facilitator role, we encourage you to participate with a client.

This workshop will be of particular value to teams in the early stages of working on joint projects. While developing their individual and collective leadership capacities, participants will simultaneously create a shared vision for their projects, engage with internal and external stakeholders, and prototype new ideas.

More info can be found here.

The Intrepid Knowledge event is hosted by Marta Varanda, the Action’s Vice Chair, at the Lisbon School of Economics & Management of the University of Lisbon. The three-day programme are as follow:

• 27th March - Focus on Inter &Trans-Disciplinary facilitation and implementation

• 28th March - Focus on Inter &Trans-Disciplinary urban research enablers & changes in curricula

• 29th March - Focus on INTREPID KNOWLEDGE & the future of university

More info and resources can be found here .

Also, take a look at TRuST’s involvement here!

-SDGs in University Curricula : ‘Sustainability Education in Practice (SEP) How to integrate SDGs into current university’s economics curricula?’ by our principal investigator Giulia Sonetti, our advisor, Marta Varanda & Patricia Melo.