Connecting ideas, policies, people and action as a gateway to sustainable future

We are a community of top scholars from across the university, committed to delivering world-leading research around global sustainable development

Our vision: IGSD as a gateway to sustainable (GTS)

The IGSD was launched in 2019, aiming to be at the forefront of knowledge creation that enables transformation towards a more sustainable, prosperous, healthier and just world for all, becoming the hub of excellence on sustainability research at Warwick. In 2022, under the new Director Professor Elena Korosteleva, the IGSD sets to become the gateway to research on global sustainable development at Warwick. It is also seen as a vehicle for shaping the Research pillar of the University’s new Sustainability Strategy, along with its other components - Education, Operations, and Engagement. In addition, the IGSD aims to grow its own cutting-edge research to be recognised nationally and internationally for excellence in its transformative research.

Our mission

To enhance Warwick’s leadership in transdisciplinary research on global sustainable development.

Our Strategy

To implement its vision, IGSD will pursue a three-pillar approach:

It will grow and consolidate its thematic portfolios of cutting-edge research on:

- depleting bio-diversity and environmental governance in the Anthropocene;
- resilience as a multi-species community of relations in facing global challenges, and
- complex eco-systems and climate change, with water being a central theme.

It will become a gateway to sustainable by contributing to the Warwick's Way to Sustainable through research and practice, supported by large-scale funding bids.
It will champion, and be recognised for its leadership in global sustainable development, nationally and globally, working with our strategic Partner-HEIs towards developing a Sustainability Excellence Framework, with a transparent and accessible accreditation scheme in the future.

Through our research we tackle the following SDGs

Our Goals

We envisage :

Launch and contribute to the implementation of Warwick's Sustainability Strategy
Shape research pillar and research culture of sustainable development at Warwick
Visualise and engaging with the sustainability research networks across and beyond Warwick
Organise an Annual Sustainability Conference (ASC) for scholarly exchange on the thematic challenges to global sustainable development
Launch and grow an ECR Sustainability Training School (ECR STS) at Warwick and its strategic partners such as EUTOPIA, GUILD, Toronto and Monash.
Develop large-scale funding bids, leveraging Warwick’s diverse range of sustainable development scholars
Grow policy impact (SPIF) on sustainable development, locally and internationally, linking community-based co-production of knowledge with the decision-making world.

Our activity

Cutting-edge global sustainable development research

We will deliver large-scale research programmes, leverage interdisciplinary expertise and working in partnership with transdisciplinary, non-academic connections across the globe.
We will bring researchers to Warwick to explore together new funding opportunities and to think about the connections between disciplines.
We will launch a Transdisciplinary ECR Sustainability Training School (ECR STS) to develop transdisciplinary sustainability research skills, community, and policy impact.
We will support researchers at Warwick by fostering an Internal Sustainability Network (ISN) to articulate the change they expect to see in their research, by using approaches such as Theory of Change, and this will include the development of thinking around more effective engagement with policy frameworks such as the UN SDGs.
We will seek to attract global talent through schemes such as global professorships.

A vibrant research environment rooted in community and interdisciplinarity

Working alongside Warwick's Global Research Priorities programme, our activity will include a rolling schedule of events in support of network building.
We will work with research centres, programmes, and institutes to highlight and visualise the breadth of the contribution Warwick makes to GSD research.
Community building and forging a sense of connection across the variety of sustainability actors at Warwick will also be important, and we will do this by building a network of GSD research fellows and champions, who will act as an academic liaison point with departments, enabling us to connect and coordinate the various strands of GSD research at Warwick.
We will seek to cultivate a supportive GSD awareness culture that shares best practice to enhance research, for example by delivering transdisciplinary methods labs.

Exchanging knowledge for the benefit of the people and the planet

An international Advisory Board consisting of policymakers, practitioners and other non-academic stakeholders will advise and support us as we strive to enhance the impact of sustainability and GSD research at Warwick, ensuring that where we know “what works”, we are sharing it.
Research impact will be a key area of focus, with a flagship biennial Sustainability Policy Impact Forum (SPIF), providing strategic policy recommendations for UNFCCC COP and other decision-making bodies such as the UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development.
An annual Sustainability Research Festival, with an academic & local communities’ focus, will be developed in partnership with the Warwick Institute of Engagement.

For more information on Warwick's Global Sustainable Development degree programmes, see the School for Cross Faculty Studies