The Master’s in Sustainability Transformations comprises 120 ECTS and corresponds to a workload of four semesters of full-time study. You must hold at least a Bachelor’s degree (BSc or BA) for admission to the programme (please see the “Requirements” section for more detail on admissions).
Programme content
This cutting-edge MSc will equip you with the scientific and social foundations needed to address global challenges of sustainable development. You will gain a thorough understanding of the state of research in this field, including how research can contribute to overcoming the associated societal, economic, and environmental challenges. During this interdisciplinary programme, you will acquire the competences required to conceive of and implement sustainability transformations at various scales. By competences we mean not only academic knowledge, but also professional skills and critical awareness needed to bridge the gap between science and policy and tackle the great sustainability challenges of our time.
Each of these elements – knowledge, skills, and awareness – is described below:
Academic knowledge
Systems knowledge: Knowledge about complex social, economic, and ecological interrelationships and their interacting effects. In other words: understanding how systems (i.e. the complex interactions between environment, society, and economy) work.
Target knowledge: Knowledge about relevant objectives, including how these objectives are selected over others (i.e. justifying selection, prioritizing objectives). Science can provide direction for steering towards sustainable development.
Transformation knowledge: Knowledge about realistic solutions, options for action, strategies, and measures. Scientific contributions (e.g. in the form of rules, solutions, measures, cultural practices, or technologies) to promote sustainable development. Transformation knowledge includes monitoring and reviewing the achievement of goals, using disciplinary and interdisciplinary scientific methods.
Professional skills
The professional skills needed to conceive of and implement sustainability transformations are diverse and depend on the situation in question. They are anchored in the standard educational programme of each discipline, and include the ability to compose targeted texts for different audiences, processing data using spreadsheets or statistics programmes, and finding creative ways of presenting data visually. Other basic skills include researching and evaluating relevant information, using various technologies to facilitate communication, and mastering subject-specific methods of data collection.
Critical awareness
Critical awareness equips you with the ability to question, assess, and navigate the subjective theories (i.e. worldviews, ideas, opinions, beliefs, convictions, etc.) you may have developed through the influences of socialization (e.g. through your upbringing, in your social circles etc.). Through critical awareness, you can put these personal convictions into perspective, comparing them with scientific theories and drawing valuable conclusions for your actions.
Programme objectives
Upon successful completion of the programme, students are able to:
- Respond to topics and challenges of sustainable development and sustainability transformations in an inter- and transdisciplinary way, applying the specialist and methodological competences they have acquired through research and application.
- Work independently on issues of sustainable development and sustainability transformations.
- Analyse global societal challenges of sustainable development; the status, challenges, and contribution of research; as well as general (analytical and transformational) approaches – and relate these to one another.
- Apply inter- and transdisciplinary theories; analytical and transformational approaches; and models for action, strategies, and tools to sustainable development.
- Independently design and implement projects and collaborate in inter- and multidisciplinary teams as well as with actors from science and practice to achieve goals, communicating these goals in a targeted way, and critically reflecting on actions.
- Work towards an alternative future that meets the existential challenges of global development and initiate, design, and implement transformation processes.
Based on the above programme objectives, graduates will be qualified to promote sustainability transformations through their professional activities in any number of areas, including academia, business, policymaking, administration, or civil society initiatives.
