Headline: Tracking Interactions between People and the Earth – the IASS Joins Geo.X

The Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) has joined the multidisciplinary initiative Geo.X. Founded in 2010, the geoscience network of excellence in Berlin and Potsdam explores the mechanisms and consequences of people’s interactions with the earth system with a view to finding answers to the problems of global climate change, the growing number of devastating natural disasters, and the challenge of supplying a steadily growing world population with enough food and energy.

With its interdisciplinary approach, its know-how in policy advice, and its broad research spectrum ranging from architecture to contemporary history, philosophy, political science, physics and legal studies, the IASS enhances the close collaboration of researchers in different disciplines in engineering, the humanities, economics, and the natural and social sciences that Geo.X strives for. In the past, the IASS and Geo.X already cooperated intensively on the GeoEd project (geoscientific teaching and learning modules and concepts for advanced teacher training), and this partnership is set to continue now that the IASS has joined the Geo.X network.

The goals of Geo.X – an initiative with eight partner institutes – are the multidisciplinary collaboration of its members in joint research projects, coordinated teaching programmes, the efficient use of scientific infrastructures, as well as the communication of scientific knowledge in the public sphere. Research is focussed on interactions between people and the earth system with the aim of developing sustainable strategies for managing these interactions in future.