University of Luxembourg

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Located in the heart of the European Union, the University of Luxembourg has made international cooperation with one of its priorities. It considers it a valuable tool to reach excellence in research and education.
This university is one of the few in the world to be multilingual and has students, researchers, and professors from all over the world.
Moreover, student mobility is actively promoted. One semester abroad is compulsory for all Bachelor students, and many exchange opportunities are also on offer for Master or Ph.D. students. For the latter, there is, in particular, the possibility of joint supervision of a thesis with a university abroad.
A series of agreements with partner universities throughout Europe and worldwide contribute to promoting student mobility. Some of these agreements also involve the exchange of academic staff or current research projects.
The University of Luxembourg subscribes to the principle of international student mobility under the Bologna agreements (1999).
The Act of 12 August 2003 on the creation of the University of Luxembourg implements this principle in the following terms: “ A bachelor’s degree may be conferred only if a student enrolled in the University has attended, for a required period, another university or any other institution of higher education abroad.”
Mobility is a real winning asset for students. By living and studying abroad and coming into contact with another academic culture, students are inevitably put in a situation that enables them to question and assess their personal choices, ways of thinking, and approaches. Students who wish to study abroad must enroll and earn at least 30 ECTS credits.
The course director recognizes the ECTS credits earned abroad based on the previously signed learning agreement.
The world in the 21st century is experiencing accelerating change in environment and climate, as well as in the technological, economic, and social spheres. How can we ensure improved coupling between science and society for a more effective transition to sustainability? Traditional disciplinary fields of ‘normal science’ can only play a limited role in resolving such complex problems, especially considering the current rift between the natural and the social sciences.
In Luxembourg, salient disciplinary research and teaching to describe specific sustainability challenges that are set in specific systems are established, and the development of critical interdisciplinary research areas including on transport/mobility, health economics, ecological economics, economic geography, and Green ICT is well underway. However, relatively little research combines natural science and engineering with critical perspectives from social sciences and humanities on the functioning of our society. This is, however, required in order to better understand and act upon complex social-ecological systems. A new field of transformative sustainability science is emerging, in which researchers, civil society, private enterprise, and governments collaborate intending to transform how society and environment interact.
Universities with their combined mission of research, teaching, and civic engagement play a pivotal role in building this new mode of scientific inquiry.
The Knowledge Centre for sustainability-related research in Luxembourg, The Knowledge Centre, is part of a virtual platform for capacity and network building to develop sustainability science in Luxembourg. We propose to develop a Platform for Sustainability Science as an arena for research, teaching, and learning that plays an active role in transforming relations between society, environment, economy, and technology. The Platform will be developed as a nodal point for capacity building in a growing network of existing disciplinary public research teams, government units, private firms, and organized civil society interested in engaging in transformative sustainability science. For this purpose, the Platform will focus on building structures and activities for capacity building for engaging diverse sectors of society in such research, teaching, and learning.
The main first aim is to promote the development of collaborative research projects and education programs across the natural and engineering sciences, social sciences, humanities, and practice. Over the first five years, this Platform is proposed to be built in conjunction with a first research project that combines two strands of research to assess current and future impacts of local energy-, food-, and water-systems on natural stocks and flows of Carbon, Nitrogen, and water.
PHASE I – 2016-2020: In the first five years we will develop the institutional structures of the Platform and quality criteria for sustainability science in Luxembourg, establish the knowledge platform, a network of local and international experts and stakeholders, conduct and conclude the first research project, and co-create 2-3 additional research proposals from workshops on salient sustainability challenges. By working with faculty engaged in our research project, we will also aim to leverage our research for systematically increasing the offer of relevant learning opportunities at all higher education levels in Luxembourg (Bachelor, Masters, Ph.D. and professional education, and for the Certificate in Sustainability and Social Innovation), including the building of an Executive Training Programme to equip for engagement in sustainability science projects.
PHASE II – 2021-2025: Based on performance evaluation of the first five years, and if external funds to support post-doc and Ph.D. positions have been acquired, and in more general terms, if networks, processes and sources for the acquisition of third party funding for sustainability science in Luxembourg have been successfully established, we will develop a proposal to expand the remit and increase the visibility of the Platform. If circumstances allow, the Platform could also be developed as an instrument that is shared with other interested public research organizations in Luxembourg.

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