The course is designed to engage students in the practice of collaborative, integrative multidisciplinary research needed for tackling complex multi-scale issues involved in creating viable human futures. Topics will include the ‘science wars' and knowledge systems, justice and fairness dimensions of interventions for sustainability,  the role of institutions and civil society in regulating human behaviour, and patterns of consumption, , resource use versus conservation, living with risk and uncertainty, balancing individual wants and social needs, global equality of access and opportunity.

The course involves student projects that investigate a future issue in a collaborative partnership with an external agency, institution, company or enterprise. Seminars will concentrate on the practice and application of research methodologies, methods and tools for doing and integrating research across many discipline areas. Attendance at seminars is a course requirement 

Contribution to seminar activities (10%), seminar facilitiation and write up, (35%), and a research project using systems methods, including a critical analysis of methodology (55%). Regular attendance and participation in classwork and fieldtrips is required.

Students who fail to submit set work by the due date or fail to participate in classes and field trips may be excluded from examination.

65 contact hours comprising lectures, tutorials and seminars

Bachelor degree; with general science knowledge.

with ECOS6506 or SRES6506

Brown, V., Harris, J., and Russell, J. (2010) Tackling Wicked Problems London: Earthscan