Experiencing personal sustainability and climate transformations – techniques and practices for narrating the interconnected self

What motivates individuals to engage in personal sustainability transformations?

Since 2015 when the UN adopted 17 global goals to transform our world, research on sustainability transformations have increasingly attract attention in its political and practical spheres, while personal sustainability transformations although recognized, are still scarcely studied. This project asks: what is needed for a transformative change of perspective to take place?

In particular, the project 1) develops a conceptual model for inner transformation processes, 2) empirically investigates experiences of personal transformative change, 3) simultaneously engage in partnership for personal sustainability transformations.

The project is a collaboration between Department of Thematic Studies – unit of Environmental Change, Center for Climate Policy Research at Linköping University with expertise in the intersection between sustainability transformations, sense-making, and communication, and Empaticus - an organization with long experience of guiding contemplative practices and inner transformation.

The course developed in the project will be offered to Swedish Folh High Schools through the Transitions Network.

The project will not only provide novel empirical contributions to the understandings of the processes by which inner transformation rest upon, it will also be helpful to move the young research field of personal sustianability transformations forward.