| 1 – 3.30pm: | Peter Lefort (Green Futures Network) will facilitate an interactive workshop to explore the issues to come in the next ten years, and how the ESI can respond. |
| 4 – 7pm: | Party and the launch of our retrospective infographic with Vice Chancellor Professor Lisa Roberts and guests. |
Introduction
Since 2013, the ESI community has been focused on identifying solutions to environmental challenges through interdisciplinary collaboration and research. Our work has included attention to the smallest micro-organisms alongside planetary processes, and we work in partnership to develop ideas and solutions across traditional silos. As we look ahead to the next decade, we need to draw together our collective knowledge on new and emerging issues of environmental concern, to help us plan for, nurture, and support future activity, reflecting our core aim of ‘working with natural systems for sustainable futures’.
Our aim
We are proposing to run a horizon scanning process at ESI over the coming months, culminating in a participative workshop to coincide with the ten–year celebration event on 25 May 2023. The aim is to identify ten priority research areas for ESI over the next decade (towards 2033). We will then visualise the interdisciplinary connections between the emerging ideas, and collectively identify opportunities to work across boundaries to ensure that the ESI is making the most of its diverse and unique community.
Who can contribute?
We encourage the whole of the ESI community to get involved – ESI staff and students, affiliates, external partners and anyone in the wider community who would like to contribute.
How will it work?
We are inviting the ESI community to submit up to ten ideas or topics of importance via the online form below. Topics will be collated by theme into a long list, identifying commonalities and gaps. These initial clusters will then be visualised to help us find links between them. At our community workshop event in May, these topics will then be further refined through facilitated group discussions, and we will collectively generate a final list of interdisciplinary themes.
Timeline
| December 2022 – March 2023 | Collect initial responses |
| March – April 2023 | Visualise the initial ideas and share for further feedback |
| May 2023 | Open workshop and celebration event on Thurs 25 May |