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Projektbeschreibung:

Humanity is following an unsustainable path. Climate change, ecological degradation, loss of biodiversity, persisting extreme poverty, rising inequality, social injustice, those are all challenges that have to be addressed in order to secure prosperity and favorable living conditions for current and future generations.

We thus need a widespread transformation towards sustainability. The way we produce, consume and live has to become more sustainable, in an economic, ecological and social sense. Innovations can significantly foster this transformation towards sustainability.

Innovations can be understood as a result of various interactions between numerous actors within a given set of rules and institutions, so called innovation systems. The creation and transfer of knowledge play a central role in these innovation systems. Actors create, co-create and transfer knowledge to derive innovations for the transformation towards sustainability. This puts a focus on universities, as the creation and transfer of knowledge are their core functions.

A crucial factor regarding such interactive learning processes is proximity. Five different dimensions of proximity can be distinguished: geographical, cognitive, organizational, social and institutional.

Aim of the doctoral project is to analyze the knowledge processes leading to sustainability innovations and the role of universities in these processes. Investigating the different dimensions of proximity is a crucial element in this endeavor.