The 2016 approved University Development Plan defines the following, recently confirmed profile-giving guiding themes for the university:

• Environment and sustainability with the focus on biodiversity and marine sciences, sustainability and energy of the future
• People and Technology, with a focus on hearing research, cooperative safety-critical systems, neurosensors, and care systems and patient orientation.
• Society and education with a focus on diversity and participation, participation and education, professionalisation processes in teacher education, and social transformation and subjectification.

Oldenburg's sustainability research is characterised by concrete thematic areas of social action within the global "Grand Challenges" of sustainable development. In particular, research activities deal with

1. Coastal spaces as socio-ecological systems in the transition between marine and terrestrial spaces
2. Climate and society with a focus on climate change and its societal dimensions, whereby strategies and measures for adaptation to climate change are central
3. Human-nature-technology interactions, in which environmental and sustainability economics, nature conservation and knowledge regulation are of particular importance.
4. the cross-sectional area of integrative system analysis and transdisciplinary design, in which conceptual approaches such as resilience, social theory, dilemmas of sustainability and integrative methods as well as the design-oriented subject areas of education for sustainable development, development cooperation, sustainability and innovation management and governance are developed. International and regional problem situations and their interactions are combined with an inter- and transdisciplinary as well as reflexive approach to problem solving.

Structurally, Oldenburg's sustainability research is anchored in various institutes and faculties of the university. Interdisciplinary networking and cooperation is at the core of the work of COAST and is carried out in the integrated centres CENTOS, CEM and ZENARiO and the ICBMs and by ForWind are carried out. In addition, many relevant research projects are IBU located.