Human Development and Sustainability Science
UiB Global, the Department of Health Promotion and Development and the Comparative Research Programme on Poverty (CROP) have joined forces to initiate research within the new field of sustainability science.
The initiative aims to address a problem in academia that is blocking our full capacity to contribute to sustainable health, environment and development worldwide. These challenges are inextricably intertwined, but those who are working for development are trapped in ‘compartments’: government ministries and directorates with narrow portfolios, specialized NGO’s and interest groups that compete for scarce resources rather than collaborate. The same goes for academia, where specialties develop their own ‘languages’, models and theories and concepts, and specialised research methods, which are key to scientific progress. An unfortunate consequence is that academic specialities often find it difficult to communicate with another.
What is needed are spaces for collaboration where the barriers ‘dissolve’ sufficiently to allow researchers with different backgrounds to work together, and with non-academicians, to address complex social challenges. How can diverse academic specialties learn to cross their cultural bounds sufficiently to work together — synergistically — for development? An emerging and encouraging answer is transdisciplinary research (TDR), which aims to solve vital social problems, to bridge the gap between the research approaches of different disciplines, and to include stakeholders outside academia as equal partners. The researchers who are part of the sustainability initiative have backgrounds in psychology, epidemiology, human ecology, integrated human studies, business and management science, medicine, developmental studies, health promotion, environmental medicine & science, sustainability science, international health, and poverty policy studies.
The first phase of the initiative is a WUN research project led by Professor Mittelmark, head of HEMIL, in collaboration with Professor Gro Th. Lie, academic coordinator at UiB Global, and Alberto Cimadamore, head of CROP. The project has eleven partner institutions, in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK.