Duration: 01.01.2024 - 31.10.2025
Conductor: Prof. Dr. Sigrid Kannengießer
Assistance: Monika Dzialas
Funding: Federal Ministry of Education and Research
Keywords: Sustainability practices at universities, university communication, network analysis, transformative research
The aim of the project is to analyze current governance processes, networks and practices at universities that pursue the goal of sustainability. A qualitative empirical study is conducted on the theoretical basis of sociological practice theory, governance concepts for universities, network theory, sustainability concepts and existing research on sustainability practices at universities. In this study, the research question is posed: Which governance processes, network structures and sustainability practices do actors from different university status groups (Whole Institutional Approach) use to make universities more sustainable and what specific goals are they pursuing? This question is answered through an empirical study that triangulates qualitative interviews, non-participant observations and focus groups. Problems and ambivalences in the practices and goals of the actors are reconstructed. As part of the collaborative research project "Bremen Goes Sustainable. A university region on the way to sustainability", the project focuses the university landscape in Bremen, Germany, as an example, but draws transferable findings from the results for other universities.
Following on from the project ‘Sustainability Governance, Networks and Practices at Universities – A Comparative Analysis’ funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the findings resulting from it, bachelor's students of communication science developed digital formats for science communication as part of the media practice seminar "Communicating Sustainability: Science Communication at Universities" developed digital formats for science communication in which they visualise various sustainability practices at universities, thus highlighting where sustainability can be found on campus and in everyday university life. A particular challenge was the sustainable design of the formats, the critical questioning of the use of communication tools and the associated independent development of skills for freely accessible programmes. In collaboration with Karolin Ney, the results have been used to create a virtual exhibition in the form of a website that links the formats into a narrative thread.