This transdisciplinary PhD programme has emerged in response to the global challenge of sustainability and the need for knowledge of complex inter-related social-ecological systems. In order to understand and be able to respond to such a challenge, we need new ways of knowing and producing knowledge that will make it possible to develop an integrated understanding of such systems.
Consequently, this PhD programme invites research that fits within a framework organised around the following three dimensions:
- Africa’s suite of sustainability challenges;
- theories and methods related to complexity and transdisciplinarity; and
- a selection of critical determinants of social-ecological system sustainability.
A brief description of each dimension follows (see also Figure:1 for a depiction of the research framework of the PhD programme).
Figure 1: Research framework for the transdisciplinary PhD programme
