Event: Critical analyses of the UN SDGs
Online event 2-4pm (GMT)
Tuesday 15th December
This event aims to critically analyse the UN SDGs and the SDG agenda, exploring and unpacking some of the goals in more detail.
The 17 United Nations Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, provides a ‘shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future’. They include ‘Ending Poverty’ (SDG 1) to ‘Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions’ (SDG 16). This workshop, organised by the Centre for Sustainability, Equality and Climate Action, aims to critically analyse the SDGs and the SDG agenda, exploring and unpacking some of the goals in more detail. What are the connections between ‘Good Health and Wellbeing’ (SDG 3) and ‘Sustainable Cities and Communities’ (SDG 11)? The workshop will also examine potential contractions between them. For example, can ‘Decent Works and Economic Growth’ (SDG 4) be made compatible with tackling ‘Climate Change’ (SDG 13)? And should ‘decent work’ be combined with ‘economic growth’ in the first place? And should we not be talking about ‘climate breakdown’ not ‘climate change’? And why does SDG 5 aim for ‘Gender Equality;’ while SDG 10 only aims to ‘Reduce Inequalities’ within and between societies? How significant is this and what are the politics and reasons behind the SDGs?
Given how quickly the SDGs are and will continue to drive organisational change, it is important that we discuss, critically assess and publicly share and air agreed or contested understandings of individual SDGs, how they interact and how we as citizens, employees, parents, activists etc. interpret and implement them.
Programme
Dr. Amanda Slevin (QUB) ‘Pathways for Sustainability: Critical sights on sustainability and SDGs at a local level’.
Dr Su-Ming Khoo* (Galway University) ‘The SDGs and Higher Education’
Prof. Diarmuid O’Donovan (QUB), ‘The SDGs and Public Health’
Followed by breakout discussion groups addressing:
1. Making the global local: Embedding the SDGs in our workplaces
2. Critical approaches to teaching and learning about the SDGs
3. Interdisciplinary collaboration and research on SDGs
4. Creating a sustainable university: Challenges and opportunities
Prof Stuart Elborn (QUB) ‘Reflections and next steps’
To register for this open access event see here.
This event is hosted by the Centre for Sustainability, Equality & Climate Action (Queen's University Belfast).
* Su-Ming Khoo is a contributor to the ACUSAfrica network. See the contributors page for links to more information about her work.
Seminar: Of tired narratives and the making of a disposable people - unearthing the epistemic tools embedded in the African past
28 January 2021 15:00 - 17:00 SAST
Ebrima Sall, the Executive Director of TrustAfrica, will be speaking at this event.
This is part of the Africa & Knowledge series, hosted by the Chair for Critical Studies in Higher Education Transformation, the Center for Philosophy in Africa, and the Faculty of Humanities of Nelson Mandela University and the Emengini Institute.
RSVP Link here
or email: Anele.Mngadi@mandela.ac.za