Our Goals

The Institute

With the Kassel Institute for Sustainability, the University of Kassel bundles the broad spectrum of its research and teaching on sustainability in the context of its four fields of expertise: society, nature, technology and culture. The scientists at the center work together in interdisciplinary networks on overarching sustainability topics. The Institute is characterized by a combination of three aspects: (1) It implements the unity of research and teaching. (2) The Institute conceptualizes sustainability holistically as socio-ecological sustainability. (3) Research and teaching at the Institute combine a critical-normative perspective oriented towards demands for democracy and justice with solution-oriented applied research.

What we want to achieve

We start from the realization that the current forms of knowledge production and communication are not sufficient to respond appropriately to the current sustainability crisis. A comprehensive interdisciplinary approach (based on the four university fields of competence) is needed to develop viable solutions. Our self-image is derived from this:

 

We see ourselves as a bridge between knowledge and action ...

We see our mission on four levels:

  1. researching sustainability transformations by participating in the relevant academic discourses;
  2. teaching about change towards sustainability by working to transform academic curricula with a view to educating future agents of change and mutual learning.
  3. co-creating change in regional, federal, inter- as well as transnational contexts;
  4. the co-design of transformative social spaces oriented towards the principles of socio-ecological justice.