Special Initiatives

The Institute has long-term interest in supporting research in, and programming on, aspects of environmental and social justice with particular emphasis on how research on topics ranging from systems of governance over environmental resources, to the right to live in safe and healthy communities to promotion of healthy ecosystems, and how these issues overlap and intersect

Researchers on this team address a suite of global challenges by targeting research, teaching and extension programming on southern Lake Michigan, the Chicagoland region and the entire Great Lakes ecosystem.

The broad purpose of this special initiative is to build new research pathways between the natural sciences, the social sciences, engineering, and the humanities, placing cutting edge research in the natural and social sciences and engineering in conversation with critical and creative humanities scholarship. The immediate goal will be to share different perspectives and concerns, consider the knowledge produced in and through different theoretical and methodological frameworks, and discuss potentials for building transdisciplinary teams centered on the general objective of imagining sustainable futures.