The learning experience of the Sustainable Development Lab

The ambition of the Sustainable Development Lab is to leverage the knowledge and competences of students, supervisors and collaborative organizations in terms of how to address complex and holistic sustainability challenges.

The Sustainable Development Lab is inspired by the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations and Educations for Sustainable Development from UNESCO. Both of these initiatives underline the need for dynamic, systemic and interdisciplinary approaches to foster sustainable transitions. Such approaches are not always possible to gain experience with in the traditional and siloed structure of university educations. The Sustainable Development Lab, thus, provides a unique experience on how to engage in interdisciplinary collaboration and address sustainability challenges in a more dynamic and systemic way.

The Sustainable Development Labs broadly welcome engagement with all of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and in that sense invite for a broad engagement with sustainability. The project missions should thus take starting point in these SDGs. However, this said we have a particular focus on the green transition, and expect all projects to integrate this perspective. The learning process itself is inspired by the key competences outlined in the Education for Sustainable Development, where competences relating to adaptive, interdisciplinary, systemic and transformative characters are outlined. The Lab provides a learning framework that will support students, supervisors and collaborative organizations in acknowledging the need of these competences and navigating in how to apply and develop these as part of the given project mission.