Research on and for sustainable development

The university’s vision is to be an effective actor that creates knowledge through collaboration that is highly applicable and has substantial societal relevance. Through our research we can build partnerships with others to increase knowledge about and solutions to sustainability challenges that are identified in Agenda 2030.

Research is a joint effort, in which knowledge is developed successively, and we cannot know ahead of time what projects or focuses will provide the most important contributions to sustainable development. Individual research projects together provide small pieces of a puzzle that help us to describe, explain, and solve current and future challenges in our effort to achieve sustainability. The university’s point of departure is that the pursuit of knowledge that takes place in the collaboration between the university’s researchers and various external actors, as well as the collaboration between various subject areas, increases the chances of contributing to this development of knowledge.   

In addition to contributing to knowledge about and for sustainable development, research should also be conducted in a sustainable manner. This relates to demands that research is conducted according to principles of research ethics, that research keeps the carbon footprint made by travel to a minimum, and that researchers are considerate and contribute to a good working environment as well as a level playing field, including equitable conditions for women and men conducting research. Mainstreaming gender equality and integrating the level playing field into our core processes, as well as working with preventative measures, are all central in our research. These are provisions laid down in the Higher Education Act, the Anti-Discrimination Law and in our government mandate.

Objectives

• To develop research activities with an expressed sustainability focus, including gender equality.
• To increase the number of research publications and other ways of utilising research in the area of sustainability.  
• To develop new, interdisciplinary, collaborative research projects and research collaboration with the surrounding community that contributes to solving concrete societal challenges.
• Research environments and research groups as well as the processes involved in that research, such as resource distribution and career development, characterised by gender equality, a level playing field, and a good, sustainable working environment that promotes creativity and wellbeing in the workplace.
• Research conducted in accordance with good research etiquette, shared national values, and the university’s climate objectives.

Strategies

• Integrating sustainable development as an aspect of quality in the university’s Quality Assurance System for Research.
• Integrating the sustainability perspective into the university’s research strategy.
• Identifying and raising awareness about research on sustainability that is conducted at the university, making possible broader interdisciplinary research collaboration within the area of sustainability, and doing so internally, in the surrounding area, regionally, nationally, and globally.
• Developing the dimension of sustainability in our collaborative research, where we together identify problems that need to be solved to achieve sustainability and where research questions are formulated based upon the conditions in the organization under study.
• Analysing and improving researchers’ working conditions in terms of the level playing field and gender equality as well as a good working environment at large.
• Developing the university’s support system regarding questions that relate to research etiquette, so it will be easy to follow such rules.
• Departments and research environments set down goals and work actively to reduce the environmental footprint made by our research, such as that made by long-haul flights which comprise the largest portion of the university’s environmental footprint.

Responsibility

• The Vice Chancellor and the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for research have the overarching responsibility.
• The Research and Education Board and departmental boards for development, support, and follow-up (within the framework of the Quality Assurance System for Research)                  
• Department heads are responsible for development and support at the departmental level.
• Research heads and individual researchers for integration of research environments.