Knowledge and Sustainability

Research leader: Monica Hammer

Post-doctoral fellow: Katarzyna Smolarz

The Baltic Sea area and Eastern Europe have during the last half-century gone through  a number of  change processes with sometimes dramatic consequences on the environment, the sustainable usage of natural resources as well as the health and wellbeing of the population. These consequences and risks for the environment, health, economy and other sustainability dimensions are usually complex, uncertain and boundary transgressing and thus create great challenges for participants and individuals, organizations and countries. Not the least regarding the connection between different participants' production of knowledge and efforts for risk management. The theme "Knowledge and sustainability" endeavours to illustrate the complex dynamics between different sustainability dimensions, societal change and the development of knowledge and technology in the Baltic Sea area. Research and research education connected to the theme aims at developing a deeper interdisciplinary understanding of knowledge and sustainability in the Baltic Sea area and Eastern Europe by combining methodology and theory from different scientific subjects and disciplines within the social sciences, natural sciences and arts subjects.

The overall objectives with the theme is to initiate and develop new research, to strengthen the collaboration between researchers and doctoral students who are active at Södertörn University, and to strengthen national and international research networks connected to the theme. During the first three years of the theme (2005-2008) the work has chiefly been focused on three main research fields: (1) Knowledge Society: Past and Future, (2) Environmental Governance and (3) Population, Health and Welfare. Theme activities like workshops, conferences, visiting researchers/professors, post-docs etc have at the end of this first phase also resulted in a significant number of new research projects and scientific publications. With this as a foundation the theme will now during the second phase (2009-2011) focus more on developing, and strengthening the collaboration between these strong research fields and initiate new research directions with potential for development.

 

Contact:

Monica Hammer, monica.hammer@sh.se

Katarzyna Smolarz, katarzyna.smolarz@sh.se