08 to 10 February 2017 in Lüneburg.

Registration until 05 January 2017 to

Call For Papers

Conference programme

11 Nov. 2015, 10:00 -17:00
The Smart House Oldenburg

The starting point of the interdisciplinary research project "Reflexive Responsibilisation. Responsibility for Sustainable Development" is to make the diversity and heterogeneity of locally situated everyday practices and forms of knowledge the subject of research. This is achieved by combining a perspective on concrete practices with the explicit merging of the discourse on sustainability and responsibility. The focus here is on the process of responsibilisation in the network of positions of the actors involved: How are attempts made to turn people into responsible subjects for sustainable behaviour and how do they turn themselves into such subjects - or not? In view of the transformation scenarios that have characterised the sustainability discourse since the beginning, the project poses the following key questions:

How are transformation programmes actually implemented and what effects do they have in practice?

What heterogeneous sustainability-related practices and relationships of responsibility exist independently of these programmes?

How is a sustainable society conceivable beyond centralist control logics and hegemonic expert cultures?

For the workshop, we were able to bring together various experts from the field of sustainability to jointly reflect on and discuss the question of responsibility for sustainable development and the conception of the overall project. The aim is an exchange between practical and scientific perspectives. In addition to short presentations with discussion, a moderated group discussion (World Café) and a panel discussion are planned. Possible main topics of the workshop are e.g:

- Understanding 'sustainability' in the respective areas of practice

- Significance of market-based and alternative economic forms

- Relationship between top-down control logics and bottom-up sustainability initiatives

- Actors and forms of assuming responsibility for sustainability

The kick-off with all working groups and professorships will take place on 15 July 2015!

The proposal "Reflexive Responsibilisation. Responsibility for Sustainable Development", which Prof. Dr Anna Henkel submitted to the Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture as part of the "Science for Sustainable Development" call for proposals, in a team led by Prof. Dr Gesa Lindemann, Prof. Dr Thomas Alkemeyer, Prof. Dr Niko Paech, Prof. Dr Reinhard Schulz and Prof. Dr Reinhard Pfriem, has been approved.

Great success for sustainability research at the University of Oldenburg: two project proposals led by the university scored highly in the "Science for Sustainable Development" funding programme initiated by the state of Lower Saxony and the Volkswagen Foundation. Oldenburg scientists are also involved in two other approved research projects on sustainability. A total of eight projects are being funded in the new programme with around twelve million euros.

"Interdisciplinary research into sustainability has a long tradition at the University of Oldenburg - it began back in the 1970s and has been part of the university's identity ever since," explains Prof Dr H.-Jürgen Appelrath, Vice President for Research. With the current funding commitments, the high quality of Oldenburg's research is once again recognised and the interdisciplinary commitment of the scientists is honoured in a special way.

The approved projects: "Reflexive Responsibilisation. Responsibility for sustainable development" - this is the title of the research project headed by Oldenburg sociologist Prof Dr Anna Henkel. Sociologists, economists and philosophers are jointly researching the ambivalences and resulting "side effects" of the practical implementation of various sustainability programmes. The central question here is: How are attempts made to make people responsible subjects for sustainable behaviour, and how do they make themselves so - or not? The aim of the research is to reveal obstacles on the way to a sustainable society, to anticipate foreseeable consequences and to develop possible ways of reflecting on the attribution of responsibility in a sustainable society.

"Resilience of socio-technical systems using the example of the electricity transport system" is the second project, which is being led by the University of Oldenburg. Oldenburg physicist Prof Dr Ulrike Feudel is in charge of the project. Resilience is the ability of a system to maintain essential functions in the face of changes in economic, demographic and environmental conditions as well as disruptions. For example, a future energy system must be resilient to climate change, but also to the increasing feed-in of fluctuating wind energy. In the project, economists, physicists and social scientists are researching the interplay of complex networks consisting of economic actors, technical systems, institutions and social processes in the context of the energy transition. The aim is to identify resilience-determining characteristics of these networks and their interactions, which should be taken into account for the sustainable development of the energy transport system.

"NEDS - Sustainable Energy Supply Lower Saxony" is coordinated at the University of Hanover. Together with computer scientists and environmental economists from the University's School II of Computing Science, Economics and Law and the affiliated Institute OFFIS, the scientists are researching possibilities for a sustainable power supply in Lower Saxony. They are looking for ways to organise the electrical energy supply by 2050 in such a way that sustainability criteria - i.e. technology, economy, ecology and social issues - are taken into account as far as possible.

"Sustainable consumption of information and communication technology in the digital society - dialogue and transformation through open innovation" is being led by the University of Osnabrück. Business environmental and sustainability computer scientists and economists from the University of Oldenburg are involved in the project and are working with psychologists and social scientists to develop ways of making the consumption of information and communication technologies (ICT) more sustainable. They want to work with consumers, companies and politicians to develop sustainable products, services, business models and legal frameworks.

About the "Science for Sustainable Development" funding programme: With the "Science for Sustainable Development" programme, the state of Lower Saxony and the Volkswagen Foundation are for the first time funding projects that pursue interdisciplinary approaches in order to master the problems of the future. They are providing 15 million euros from the Lower Saxony Advance Programme for this purpose. A total of 66 project proposals from more than 300 working groups from all over Lower Saxony were received in the first round of proposals. From these, 15 groups were selected to present their research projects to the panel of experts and interested citizens in a public colloquium. A total of eight projects were then selected for funding.