290400 SE Inter- and Transdisciplinary Approaches to Global Change and Sustainability (2025W)

In times of increasing socio-economic and socio-environmental challenges at global and local levels, there is an urgent need for innovative and integrative approaches to address the complex sustainability challenges we face. This seminar explores inter- and transdisciplinary approaches, highlighting the need to integrate perspectives from physical and human geography.

The course will look at the ways in which human and physical geography are interconnected to address pressing environmental and social issues. The course will enable students to engage with a variety of disciplinary perspectives, methodologies and collaborative approaches to develop a holistic understanding of how different geographical subfields can work synergistically to better analyse challenges and promote sustainable solutions. Working in small groups, students will select and work on real-world problems. In order to gain insights from outside academia, the seminar will include guest contributions from practice, policy and science communication.

The aim of the seminar is to enable students to critically evaluate the benefits and limitations of inter- and transdisciplinary approaches, to apply integrative methods to analyse sustainability challenges from both human and physical geography perspectives, and to develop and present research projects that make use of insights from different geographical perspectives.