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Bridging health promotion and sustainability science: Transition to the green economy

This project will help WUN universities to achieve high quality TDR for sustainable health, environment and development in the Global South. The project bridges two research arenas; human development and sustainability science. The question driving this project is “How can we better connect social and environmental sciences to enhance the well-being of people and their environments, especially in the context of poverty”?

Hovedinnhold

Project leader: 

Professor Maurice B. Mittelmark, Department of Health Promotion and Development, in collaboration with Professor Gro Th. Lie, Head, Uni Global, and Professor Alberto Cimadamore, Head, the Comparative Research Programme on Poverty (CROP) of the International Social Sciences Council (ISSC).

Research group:

The project is a part of the research group Multicultural Venues in Health and Education (MC-venues)

Financing:

WUN (Worldwide Universities Network), University of Bergen SPIRE fund, University of Bergen Division for Research, University of Bergen Faculty of Psychology, donated facilities and staff of Uni Global and CROP, and travel grants from most of the participating institutions.

Partners:

The University of Alberta (Canada), The University of Auckland(New Zealand),The University of Bristol (UK), The University of Leeds (UK), The University of Rochester (USA), The University of Sheffield (UK), The University of Southampton (UK), The University of Sydney (Australia), The University of Western Australia, The University of Nottingham, The University of Manitoba (Canada), The University of Toronto (Canada), The Comparative Research Programme on Poverty (CROP) of the International Social Science Council (ISSC).

Project period:  

21 January  through 31 December 2013.

 

Project background:

The project aims to address a problem in academia that is blocking our full capacity to contribute to sustainable health, environment and development worldwide. The need for progress is especially urgent in many countries of the Global South, where poverty and deprivation continues to hamper development. If we stay on the present course, for example, we cannot hope to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals for improved maternal and child health and the eradication of extreme poverty. One reason for the lack of progress is the extraordinarily complex nature of the development challenge: health and environment and development are so inextricably intertwined that it is almost meaningless to try to improve the one without trying to improve them all. Yet society is poorly organised for the challenge. Those who are working for development are trapped in ‘compartments’: government ministries and Directorates with narrow portfolios, specialized NGO’s and interest groups that compete for scarce resources rather than collaborate, and academic disciplines and institutes that are so specialised that their ‘cultures’ barely interact, even if they share the same campus. That is the problem in academia that we address: how can diverse academic specialties learn to cross their cultural bounds sufficiently to work together -- synergistically -- for development? This is a hard nut to crack. There are good reasons why academic specialties develop their own ‘languages’, models and theories and concepts, and specialised research methods. Such specialisation is the key to scientific progress. An unfortunate consequence that academic specialities often find it difficult to simply communicate with another, let alone collaborate to take aim at complex social challenges. So, the issue is, can we have both: the distinct disciplinary orientations that are needed to make progress on questions within science, and transdisciplinary collaborations that work in harness with society, to tackle vital social problems? The optimistic answer seems to be ‘yes’, but we cannot expect this to happen automatically. Academia is organised in academic departments, which are barriers to transdisciplinarity. What is needed are spaces for collaboration beyond the academic departments, spaces where the barriers ‘dissolve’ sufficiently to allow researchers with different backgrounds to work together, and with non-academicians, to address complex social challenges. How can academia and other actors in society develop knowledge, together, to inform positive social change? An emerging and encouraging answer is the establishment of transdisciplinary research (TDR) teams and projects and programmes, including not only scientists but other key stakeholders as well.  

 

Goal:

The project activities to be undertaken in 2013 will have four outcomes:

Outcome 1: The participating WUN and non-WUN researchers will establish a basis for future collaboration, beyond the confines of this project, by becomes better acquainted with one another’s interests, expertise and experience.

Outcome 2: A revitalised web site for the WUN Critical Global Poverty initiative.

Outcome 3: A book published by ZED Books, London, with the working title "Bridging Health Promotion and Sustainability Science for Development in the Global South".

Outcome 4: A published analysis of TDR experience at the participating WUN universities.