Research for a Culture of Sustainability at Universities

Universities have a particular responsibility to society, as they help shape societal development through their core functions in teaching, research, knowledge transfer and institutional operations. As predominantly publicly funded research and higher education institutions, they are well placed to initiate, support and investigate processes of sustainability transformation across society. There is growing momentum to make universities themselves more sustainable. In 2018, the German Rectors’ Conference (HRK) also called for the development of a Culture of Sustainability at universities. However, it remains unclear what such a culture entails and how it can be fostered and developed.

Against this background, the collaborative project ‘Universities in Society – Real-World Experiments in Transformative Learning and Research Processes for a Culture of Sustainability at Universities‘ (KuNaH) is developing a conceptual understanding of a Culture of Sustainability at universities and exploring potential pathways for transformation through real-world experiments involving different university stakeholder groups across five universities.

Our aim is to

• develop a practical framework for a Culture of Sustainability at universities, 
• investigate, through a range of real-world experiments, how a Culture of Sustainability can be fostered, and
• examine which of these approaches can be transferred to other higher education contexts and how this can be achieved.