In recent years, a wide range of initiatives and approaches have been developed and tested at German universities to implement the guiding principle of sustainable development. Even though new knowledge, concepts, and methods for implementation at universities could be elaborated in this way, there is still a lack of integrative approaches that systematically bring together the various academic fields of action as a whole-institution approach and promote a comprehensive “culture of sustainability” at universities.

Against this background, the KuNaH research project aims to establish and test an integrative research and development perspective on a culture of sustainability at universities. In this context, culture(s) of sustainability are understood as the lived practice and ongoing formal and informal processes of shaping paradigms, goals, and systemic framework conditions to promote sustainability transformation (out of) the university. The central question is how a culture of sustainability at universities can be conceptualized and described as an integrative aspect of a sustainability transformation and how it can be investigated and stimulated through real-world experiments at the respective universities.

Karlsruhe Transformation Center for Sustainability and Cultural Change (KAT) is involved in stakeholder and environment analysis and in charge of the cooperative conception and implementation of the real-world experiments at KIT in the fields of “Guiding principles for sustainability at KIT” and “Sustainability in innovation management and knowledge transfer” with the relevant stakeholders.

Moreover, KAT plays a decisive role in accompanying the real-world experiments at the partner universities. To this end, an overarching orientation and documentation scheme will be developed and individual counseling provided if necessary.

Project website: https://kunah.de/en/

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