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PhD Workshop: Sustainable Development Research – an Interdisciplinary Chance or Challenge?

organized by PD Dr. Berthold Kuhn

Live Session I on 04.11.2021: 4.00-6.00 p.m. CEST UTC+2

Live Session II on 10.11.2021: 4.00-6.00 p.m. CEST UTC+2

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the UN, reflect the global consensus about improving sustainability. The goals have important implications for policy and research in areas ranging from climate protection to gender issues. The SDGs are complex and interwoven; the success of one goal is often closely linked to the success of another. Timely and impactful implementation of the goals therefore requires interdisciplinary research.

The workshop offers the opportunity to discuss the complex topic of sustainability from an interdisciplinary perspective with an international group of PhD students and professors. Participants are asked to provide a short abstract outlining their research and a reflection of how their topic interacts with one or more SDGs. Through the workshop participants develop a broader understanding of interdisciplinary research collaborations in the field of sustainable development.

Rather than presenting general overviews of sustainable development research, the workshop is interested in topical areas of individual dissertations, which should be reviewed in the light of the 17 SDGs.

› WORKSHOP PROGRAM


Get prepared for the workshop

  1. Sign up and log in using our conference platform Lounjee. Register for the live workshop sessions and receive access to some of the conference materials. (Please open this link with Google Chrome or Safari).
  2. Watch our short 3-minute tutorial to get familiar with the core functions of our conference platform Lounjee.
  3. Explore the broad networking opportunities that our conference platform offers by watching this 90 second video.

Impressions from the PhD Workshop 2020

For me as a Politics student focusing on the international level, it was a perceived challenge at first to find overlapping approaches to the topic with the other participants. However, I finally joined together with students of Engineering, Law, Economics and Management investigating scientific and behavioral aspects. What seems like an arbitrary mix of research foci, in the end, was a highly beneficial lens that widened my perspective on approaches to the climate change challenge. The discussion not only helped me to see the plethora of small aspects that make up the ‘big picture’ of national policy positions in the international negotiations, but it also opened up my view on how the SGDs (esp. 13 and 17) fit with my own research project.
It is highly motivating to see how differently, but equally passionately, people tackle the same overarching challenge. In this sense, the workshop showed me how much potential interdisciplinary collaboration has for designing comprehensive and, thus, more effective projects.

— Kim Vender is a 4th-year doctoral researcher in Politics and International Relations, University of Edinburgh and participated in the UAS Conference 2020.

Workshop Host

Dr. Berthold M Kuhn

International Cooperation Advisor & PD (adj. Professor & Ph.D. supervisor), Dept. of Political and Social Sciences, Freie Universität Berlin. Researcher and Senior Consultant for international cooperation projects

Dr. Berthold Kuhn is a political scientist and international cooperation advisor on sustainable development. He works as an adjunct professor at the Otto-Suhr-Institute of Political Science (OSI), Freie Universität Berlin and as consultant to the European Commission, United Nations organisations, German development cooperation, consulting firms and non-governmental organisations. He was previously a professor at the School of Public Affairs and School of Public Policy, Xiamen University and a GIZ-CIM and Rhineland-Palatinate cooperation expert.
His work focuses on sustainable development and climate policies in comparative perspective, sustainable finance, state-market-civil society cooperation, China in the global context, the role of civil society, non-governmental organisations (NGO), human rights (including economic, social and cultural rights), participation issues, capacity development, monitoring and evaluation. His teaching experience covers Master and Bachelor level courses and executive training courses for diplomats, government officials and project managers in English and German on a wide range of political science/political sociology topics. Berthold Kuhn has worked and travelled in more than 70 countries, mainly in Europe, Asia and Africa, and is fluent in German, English and French and able to communicate in Chinese.
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