Sustainability leaders are those who inspire and drive us towards a more sustainable world and have the competences to understand and tackle sustainability challenges under conditions of extreme urgency, rapid change, and uncertainty.
The focus of the UNIC International Sustainability Leadership Autumn School is on leadership skills and sustainability competences which complement the deep domain-specific knowledge acquired within academic disciplines e.g. systems thinking, futures thinking, sustainability values, societal impact, and interdisciplinarity.
The Autumn School will enable you to develop a “sustainability mindset” to think, plan and act with empathy, responsibility, and care for our planet. The Autumn School will also draw upon living laboratory methodologies for co-creation, critical reflection, and experiential learning developed and refined within the UNIC Centre for City Futures.
Competences and skills learned within the programme will be applied to a city-based challenge within Cork City. The theme of the 2025 Autumn School will be: "Walking and pedestrianisation for liveable, net zero cities"
DATES AND FORM OF PARTICIPATION IN THE AUTUMN SCHOOL
It is required to participate in both the online and onsite part of the event.
- The online component will take place in September (4 sessions of 2 hours each starting on 16 September).
- The physical mobility will take place on 13-17 October 2025 in Cork. The event allows to accumulate 5 ECTS.
NOTE: The deadline for applications is Friday (16 May) at 5:00 p.m.
WHO CAN PARTICIPATE?
The event is addressed to master and doctoral students, as well as post-graduate researchers.
FINANCING
The University of Lodz will award funding to students and doctoral students accepted to participate in the autumn school to cover their travel and subsistence expenses:
- travel: 2000 PLN
- subsistence: 500 PLN/day 500
- stipend: 75 PLN/day for a student, 125 PLN/day for a doctoral student
NOTE: The funding applies only to those studying and pursuing a PhD, it does not cover the participation of people conducting postdoctoral research.
RESULTS ANNOUNCEMENT DATE
The results will be announced in early June 2025.
APPLICATION FORM
To fill in the form, go to the page.
LEARNING OUTCOMES OF AUTUMN SCHOOL
- Analyse, synthesise and interpret complex problems across different domains and scales to solutions that address the environmental, social, governance and economic aspects of sustainability.
- Understand how to work across diverse stakeholder groups showing empathy when collaborating with others.
- Understand futures thinking approaches and methodologies to envision and craft “rich pictures” for preferred sustainable futures.
- Collectively design and implement interventions, transitions, and transformative governance strategies to become an agent of change for sustainability.
- Be able to map, reconcile, and negotiate sustainability values and principles as applied to planet and society and reflect on own values.
- Articulate the concept and practice of sustainability as it relates to the self, community, your research, and the wider world.
- Deepen awareness of individual leadership style and identify areas for growth.
The financing of the participation in the event comes from the We are UNIC! project. The project is financed by the European Union under the programme Support for European University Alliances, NAWA project number FERS.01.05-IP.08-0219/23, amount of project funding from EU funds: PLN 62,705,297.60.
