The transformation to a sustainable, resource-efficient, and climate-neutral economy faces numerous systemic challenges. Within the SiNfo project, researchers at ITAS can draw on the institute’s long-standing, theoretically and empirically sound expertise in the field of transdisciplinary and transformative sustainability research to support this transformation. The SiNfo project accompanies and supports six projects of the program for applied sustainability research at universities of applied sciences in Baden-Württemberg (PAN HAW BW) in order to strengthen the effectiveness of their activities and embed them into an integrative sustainability approach.

The six projects that have successfully competed for a place in the PAN HAW BW program are expected to effectively contribute to the sustainability goals of the European Green Deal. These projects engage in research activities at the interface between science, industry, and civil society, enabling the sustainable, transdisciplinary co-production of knowledge.

In order to strengthen the performances of the projects and the program, researchers at ITAS will conceptually and methodologically support and advise the projects toward integrative sustainability. Research will be carried out at three closely interlinked levels to achieve the projects’ formulated goals. First, individual advisory and capacity-building formats will strengthen the project teams’ research, teaching, and transfer potentials. The advisory formats will cover the following topics:

1. Integrated understanding of sustainability and research in social responsibility
2. Transdisciplinarity and real-world laboratory research
3. Project-based and research-oriented university teaching for sustainable development
4. Social and sustainable entrepreneurship

Second, the ITAS team will identify and utilize synergies between the projects to facilitate collaboration among the six consortia toward a joint, reciprocal learning and research process.

And third, the concepts, architectures, methods, processes, and findings of the projects will be evaluated and analyzed at a superordinate, overarching level in the form of consultation. In particular, success factors and barriers related to the universities’ sustainability topics in research, teaching, and transfer as well as their systemic embedding in overarching issues, especially with regard to the implementation of the Green Deal, will be assessed.

Alongside these three levels, the methodology of this accompanying research process will be continuously critically reflected upon. This reflection enables an ongoing adaptation to the needs of the individual projects as well as the collection and assessment of knowledge for the benefit of future accompanying projects.

This unique form of research is a pioneering achievement toward long-term transformative sustainability.

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