The United Nations Member States adopted the Agenda for Sustainable Development in 2015 as a collaboratively developed and commonly accepted pathway towards peace and prosperity for all people by the year 2030. The United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have since become a key reference as well as performance indicator for stakeholders from all around the world to guide, coordinate and assess policies, decisions, and actions to improve life on our planet.

This course introduces the underlying challenges of UN’s 17 SDGs in three thematic blocks – Environment and Ecologies; Society and Culture; and Health and Well-being; and explores their complex interrelations and investigates existing approaches and strategies for their solutions. In establishing these foundations, the course will allow students to identify and focus the challenge(s) of their interest, to position their own knowledge and skills within the transdisciplinary frameworks already working towards solutions, and thus to develop innovative ideas and approaches that will be the starting points for their subsequent individual explorations for the following years of their studies. Students, after taking the course, should also develop an aptitude to recognise the importance and potential hurdles of crossing disciplinary boundaries for innovation.