Working Group
Plural Sustainabilities

Our Goals

Bonn hosts a vibrant community of leading experts in the field of sustainability - in research institutions, civil society, policy and municipal work.
This has also given rise to a group of individuals who broaden and enrich prevailing understandings of “sustainability” through their international and transdisciplinary field experience. We bring together this expertise through a range of dynamic formats and continue to expand it collaboratively. 

Regular meetings and in-depth international workshops on sustainability, accompanied by collaborative writing, form the core of our working group.

At the heart of our activities are global dialogue and interdisciplinary approaches to sustainability. Accordingly, we are continuously involved in national and international exchange formats. Among these were, for example, the workshops of the working group “Alternative Sustainabilities. Between local contexts and global measures” (2022–2024) within the framework of the German Committee for Sustainability Research (DKN) in Future Earth, in which nine researchers from our group met regularly to delve deeper into shared research questions.

Another highlight was the international workshop “Interlinking Sustainability Science in a Global North–South Dialogue” (14–19 July 2024), which enabled in-depth discussions with colleagues from Bolivia, Germany, Ghana, Indonesia and Colombia. The workshop focused on comparing sustainability research across different scientific systems, reflecting on research policy and cooperation, and contributing to the consultation process of the German Sustainable Development Strategy.

We also actively shape workshops on interdisciplinary sustainability research. One example is the working phase for the resource book “Rethinking Sustainability: Principles and Practice”. Around 30 researchers and educators from all career stages worked collaboratively on texts, engaged in critical reflection and brought together diverse perspectives — a process that fundamentally shapes our approach and understanding of sustainability.

Our working group is developing new impulses in teaching by actively involving early-career researchers and supporting their development through targeted qualification formats. We currently focus on innovative teaching and exchange formats that create spaces for reflection, methodological depth, and the joint advancement of sustainability-related research practice.

A key current initiative is the transformative two-year Spring School series (2025–2026), organized by the Center for Development Research (ZEF) at the University of Bonn in cooperation with the St Andrews Centre for Critical Sustainabilities (StACCS) at the University of St Andrews. The program is aimed at MA students with prior experience in sustainability as well as Early Career Researchers (ECRs) and focuses on rethinking research practice in sustainability science. ECRs are encouraged to think across disciplines, bring in critical perspectives, and explore the interface between research and practice.

In addition, we contribute to established teaching and lecture formats to introduce alternative perspectives on sustainability into various academic contexts. In recent years, these included the lecture “Sustainabilities in China. How Culture and Tradition Matter” (University of Rostock, 2023), the lecture “Alternative Sustainabilities? Between Local Contexts and Global Dimensions” as part of the series “Sustainability. About resources and needs” (University of Bonn, 2022), as well as the course “Alternative Sustainabilities” in the interdisciplinary program of the Bonn International Graduate School for Development Research (BIGS-DR) at ZEF (2022).

These activities highlight our aim to strongly involve early-career researchers, foster critical thinking, and integrate diverse understandings of sustainability into teaching and academic exchange.