The Contribution of Social Sciences to Sustainable Development at Universities

This volume is the first of its kind to present contemporary, state-of-the-art examples of how social science theories, models, and findings can advance all aspects of campus sustainability, an area that has so far been largely neglected. The individual chapters reflect the broad diversity of research on sustainable campus development conducted within and across basic and applied social science disciplines, drawing on a range of methods and case studies from around the world. Institutions of higher education have been among the leading promoters of sustainable development. However, efforts to transition to sustainability have been largely dominated by technological “solutions” and universities and colleges are increasingly recognizing that this transition cannot be achieved without attention to the human dimension. Administrators, campus sustainability officers and other university staff, faculty members and students, as well as alumni and external constituents all help to shape which sustainability innovations and initiatives are considered and pursued, and their participation determines the ultimate success of sustainability efforts. The book’s individual contributions illustrate how the social sciences can broaden visions of what may be possible, identify the advantages and disadvantages of different instrumental and emancipatory approaches, evaluate interventions’ effectiveness, and offer processes for learning from mistakes and successes in ways that support continuous advances toward sustainability. Given that the majority of social science research stems from universities, the level of trust in these institutions, and their mission to develop societal leaders, higher education institutions are ideally suited for testing, assessing and modeling the social innovations needed to achieve sustainability on campuses and beyond.

Walter Leal Filho is a senior professor at Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (Germany) and at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. He specializes in matters related to sustainability in higher education and has in excess of 300 publications to his credit. He is the founding editor of the “International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education” and has undertaken a variety of projects addressing sustainability in a higher education context.

Michaela Zint is a professor at the University of Michigan, with appointments in the School of Natural Resources & Environment, School of Education, and College of Literature, Science & the Arts. Her environmental education research has been published in the leading journals of a variety of fields and she has served on a number of editorial boards. She teaches higher education students to apply insights from a range of social science disciplines to advance campus sustainability, out of which her interest in this particular volume arose.