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Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA‑UAB)

ICTA-UAB researcher Sara Maestre to join the Postdoc Academy for Transformational Leadership

22 Jun 2021
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ICTA-UAB researcher Sara Maestre is one of the 20 postdocs that will be part of the Postdoc Academy for Transformational Leadership.

Sara Maestre ICTA-UAB Postdoc Academy for Transformational Leadership

The Postdoc Academy is designed to train the next generation of leaders in sustainability and transformation research. It provides an intensive high-end training with four seminars in two years that broaden the research competencies of postdocs and promote their qualifications towards transdisciplinary leadership. The program also offers seed funding for initiating research collaborations.

The Postdoc Academy is an initiative of the Robert Bosch Stiftung and a joint project of the Robert Bosch Stiftung and the four academic centres Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, the Stockholm Resilience Centre and the Dutch Research Institute for Transitions (DRIFT) in Rotterdam. Furthermore, an active network of current and former participants of the program will be established.

The program aims at postdocs from across Europe who want to make an impact on the transformation towards a sustainable society and advance the complementarity of natural science, social sciences and the humanities by means their research. They should consider themselves intrapreneurs, who act responsible and initiate positive changes and innovation within their institutions. They should also strive toward professorship or other academic leadership positions. A research topic relevant to this year’s focus topic “Pathways for Regenerative Development”, excellent English language skills, and experience with or necessity for inter- or transdisciplinary collaborations are required.

A course run consists of four seminars (three full days each) over a period of two years. Each seminar will take place at one of the four academic centres and focus on their respective expertise.

The seminars build on each other and are complementary. The first seminar introduces participants to the fundamentals of the philosophy of science and different modes of knowledge production in order to develop their capabilities for inter- and transdisciplinary research. Different approaches to doing research on regenerative development in human nature relationships will be presented.

The second seminar explores the potentials as well as the challenges of transdisciplinary research environments and transdisciplinary learning, including individual reflections of the participants on the own profile and portfolio as a researcher. They will engage with transdisciplinary research methodologies as well as transdisciplinary learning processes on different levels and explore how to tackle typical difficulties in transdisciplinary research and learning processes through insights into existing examples related to human nature relationships both from research and practice.

The third seminar introduces resilience thinking and the social-ecological system (SES) perspective, both of which are deeply rooted in complex systems theory. Key concepts will be explained, and a specific focus is placed on the importance of addressing interactions between humans and nature and how fundamental changes in these relationships are required if we are to undertake the transformations necessary to achieve sustainable development.

The fourth seminar allows participants to build on their transdisciplinary research practice by deepening their understanding of sustainability transitions and transition governance, including economic, political and cultural perspectives on transitions. It will focused on contextualized practices such as local experimentation and social innovation in land-use practices as well as processes of phasing out and (de)institutionalization. The seminar features reflexive engagements with one’s role as researcher and transformational leader, interaction with practitioners and introduces innovative methodologies along with hands-on tools.

The seminars are linked by four thematic modules that create an overarching framework.

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