Interdisciplinary Dialogue on Climate Science in Court

This panel discussion focuses on climate litigation, which is becoming a powerful tool in shaping policy and bringing about more stringent action against climate change. In these lawsuits, big emitters of greenhouse gases – companies and governments alike – are increasingly being held responsible for climate change and accountable for inaction. Three prominent panelists including…

Interdisciplinary Dialogue on Decolonizing Academia

The event explored how coloniality influences knowledge production within academia and what alternatives exist to end the reproduction dynamics of injustice within our own research practices. Two key experts; Dr. Noa K. Ha, acting Scientific Director at the Deutsche Zentrum für Integrations- und Migrationsforschung (DeZIM) and Dr. Antony Pattathu, founding member of the Interdisciplinary Center…

Conference: Global Tax Justice

Issues of global tax justice have received increasing philosophical attention in recent years. Two major threads of the debate concern (a.) international tax competition and tax evasion, and (b.) proposals for taxes to be levied on the global level. (a.) Even if taxes are raised, at least for the time being, by individual states only,…

Summer School 2018: Archetype Analysis in Sustainability Research

Interdisciplinary sustainability research, e.g., land-use or adaptation to climate change, is increasingly confronted with the difficulties of embracing complexity while building and testing theories that synthesize such complexity into actionable theories. Comparative case studies are frequently employed for this task. However, rigorous comparative approaches are yet frequently hampered by (i) a high heterogeneity of cases…

Kosmos Conference

On the occasion of Alexander von Humboldt’s 250th birthday and in light of his famous Kosmos lectures, IRI THESys and the Geography Department staged the KOSMOS Conference at HU Berlin. Termed ‘Navigating the sustainability transformation in the 21st century’ this conference provided a landmark for today’s great challenges towards sustainability. A critical and constructive debate…

Summer School 2019: Transformative Human-Environment Research & Participatory Methods: From Co-production to Co-producing

Human-environment research is the interdisciplinary study of how humans live in, affect, govern, reflect upon and perceive their natural environment, and how, in turn, that environment supports or constrains human life and culture. This research draws much of its legitimacy from being relevant for the very organisation of human-environment relations themselves. Considerable effort is thus…

THESys Transdisciplinary Dialogue on Transforming Livelihoods

Migration under the conditions of socio-ecological change The event explored how socio-ecological factors such as climate change and political instabilities are threatening livelihoods and forcing migration across the world. Increased vulnerability, conflict and insecurity are only some of the consequences as individuals move within their own nations or across borders in search of new forms…