The latest issue of Reinvention: an International Journal of Undergraduate Research presents a diverse range of content and themes that all comment on ideas of interconnectedness, interdisciplinarity, and sustainability. Moreover, it includes several contributions from students and staff in the GSD Department!

Based on a research paper submitted last year for the second-year optional core GSD module, Health and Sustainable Development, final-year single honours GSD student Onubha Hoque Syed writes on the global health priority of drug-resistant infections in ‘Investigating the factors behind differences in “lay” and “expert” medical knowledge in the context of fever treatment in Yangon, Myanmar.’ Interpreting qualitative data from Myanmar through the Capability Approach, we learn about heterogeneous personal priorities but also distinct forms of knowledge and sensemaking that shape how patients access and use medical treatment – the complexity of which begs the question: Can we still regard drug resistance really as a medical topic in which seemingly needless antibiotic use is all too often framed as ‘irrational’ or outright ‘laziness,’ or should we rather consider it a social phenomenon that revolves, among others, around the dynamics embedded in patient—doctor interactions?

Read Onubha's paper here.

Second-year single honours GSD student Virginia Thomas-Pickles reviews the book The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future by David Wallace-Wells - highlighting not only the apocalyptic threats and kaleidoscopic uncertainties that arise from climate change and that can undermine individual and collective action, but also illustrating powerfully that global economic organisation and geopolitical structures at the same time enable and obscure the climate change trajectory on which we find ourselves.

Read Virginia's book review here.

Finally, Assistant Professor in GSD, Dr Marco J Haenssgen, provides a commentary to the issue in which he reflects on the common thread of sustainability across the journal contributions. After all, sustainable development is an interdisciplinary – sometimes transdisciplinary! – endeavour which recognises that the challenges facing our world cannot be solved with just one set of tools, nor with the narrow analytical focus often introduced by rigid disciplinary boundaries. Universities play a central and growing role in this context by training and demonstrating sustainability – environmental or otherwise. Reinvention, too, asserts its critical role in this space as a platform to cultivate the interdisciplinary thinking that is so vital for constructive engagement and for solving the problems of the future.

Read Marco's commentary here.