IGCS and motan are carrying out a two-day virtual workshop and are looking for your entrepreneurial ideas.
IGCS-motan Workshop flyer 2024
Have you always had ideas on how to revolutionize the way we work and live with plastics in a sustainable way?
Then take part in our #SustainabilityChallenge: ‘Reduce | Re-Use | Recycle | Recover: Plastics in a Circular Economy – Sustainable Solutions and Innovations for a Greener Future’ and make a difference – shape the future with your innovative and sustainable ideas.
The workshop is a platform to present your entrepreneurial ideas and have an opportunity to fund those ideas into innovative solutions for a greener future under IGCS and motan.
The IGCS-motan collaborative efforts are dedicated to helping students from Indian and German academic institutions to develop and foster sustainable ideas. This workshop is a continuation of our joint vision: incorporate innovative and sustainable ideas generation in interdisciplinary research, teaching, training, and exchange in the area of sustainable development. Together motan and IGCS would like to motivate and support students to conduct research in the area of plastics and the circular economy.
Thus, IGCS and motan jointly extend an invitation to be a part of our event. We are always looking for motivated students to carry out a research project or an industry internship supported by motan and the IGCS.
2 day- virtual workshop: 02. December – 03. December 2024
Presentation: 13. December 2024
● Program:
Impulse lectures by domain experts, work in small groups on related topics and presentations
● Target group:
Students from all disciplines who are currently enrolled in an undergraduate (Bachelors), post-graduate (Masters), or doctoral program in Indian or German academic institutions
● Award:
The winner will receive a prize money and a chance to implement their innovative ideas with support from IGCS and motan.
Requirements:
● Letter of Motivation
● CV
● Certification of enrolment (in current university)
About motan
Sustainability is a core value within the motan culture. This means not only the products, solutions, and behavior but also the training of young people and the development of global networks. In addition to social aid and cultural projects, the foundation’s focus is on introducing social responsibility into business activities. For more information on motan and their activities, please visit the link.
IGCS has announced its Summer School for the year of 2024 and it will be held at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. The school will follow the umbrella theme of Regenerative Urban Futures and focus on Circular Economies and Societies.
Regeneration, surpassing sustainability, emphasizes the capacity to recover and evolve beyond existing conditions. The concept extends to diverse urban contexts, encompassing not only cities but also rural areas experiencing rapid urbanization. Despite the growing promotion of circular practices, regionally adapted approaches are often overlooked, hindering outcomes. The IGCS Summer School aims to address these challenges, facilitating collective exploration of place-specific socio-economic conditions for achieving circularity in urban areas. Through lectures and workshops, students from India and Germany will engage in mutual learning on the economic and societal aspects of circularity, leveraging cities’ potential as hubs for sustainable practices.
IGCS Summer School 2024, Information Flyer
🔍 What to Expect:
Gain insights into the concept of regeneration and its significance in today’s urban landscapes.
Explore the diverse facets of urbanization, from bustling city centers to periurban areas, all under the lens of the Anthropocene.
Delve into the challenges and opportunities of circular economies, examining strategies like reduce, reuse, and recycle.
Engage in interactive workshops and lectures led by experts from around the globe.
Collaborate with like-minded individuals to brainstorm innovative solutions for more sustainable cities.
📅 Key Details:
Theme: Regenerative Urban Futures – Circular Economies and Societies
Dates: 22.07.2024 – 02.08.2024
Application Deadline: Wednesday, 17th April 2024, 7:00 PM CET / 10:30 PM IST
If sustainable urbanization piques your interest, this school could be a perfect fit for you. Here, you’ll have the opportunity to connect with fellow enthusiasts, build lasting relationships, and engage with experts from various countries. They’ll delve into the challenges, solutions, and pathways for urban agglomerations to enhance their sustainability. Don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity to be part of the IGCS Summer School 2024!
Apply now and join us in shaping the future of urban sustainability.
Regenerative Urban Futures – Integrated Spatial Planning for Resilience
Date: 19. February – 01. March, 2024
Venue: IIT Madras, Chennai, India
Interdisciplinary Collaboration during Winter School 2020Excursion and Intercultural Exchange at Chennai, IndiaGroup Work Presentation and Feedback Session
Overall Objectives
The IGCS schools in the year 2024 are taking place under the umbrella theme “Regenerative Urban Futures”.
In current debates, regeneration is often viewed as going a step further than sustainability, for rather than sustaining particular conditions, regeneration stresses the capacity and ability to recover and even evolve beyond the existing state of affairs. By urban, we mean a wide array of situations and conditions that refer to a broad view of spatial configurations. These include not only clearly identifiable cities and towns but equally the phenomenon of planetary urbanization as part of the Anthropocene, i.e. rapidly urbanizing rural areas, large metropolitan agglomerations, urban fringes, and periurban areas that lie far outside the urban hubs.
By virtue of this overall framing, the topic of the Winter School takes up a persistent and prominent challenge for decision-makers, namely the interface of adequate planning instruments with resilience as one pivotal goal of regenerative urban futures. Simply put, what are we doing today, and what can we do tomorrow to ensure sustainable, resilient, adaptive, and regenerative urban development? Integrated spatial planning is likely to be a key solution. Here, two aspects are important: first, how can we design the morphology (patterns, demographics) of human settlements to ensure spatial integration of land use functions, and secondly, how can we best administer and manage the planning and governance process? Both these dimensions are aimed at overcoming compartmentalisation, silos, fragmentation, and opaqueness – a quality that characterizes many urban settlements across the world. For that matter, integration has been for long a challenge and a contentious issue, and yet, as a goal, it has become even more relevant nowadays as we are faced with complex, wicked global problems with consequences and repercussions in specific local contexts such as climate change and disaster risks, environmental degradation, social inequalities and disparities, or the globalization of markets and trade. For these reasons, a systems perspective is essential, in particular, taking into consideration eco-social and socio-technical systems and their transformation.
The objectives of the Winter School are:
To build collective awareness of the challenges we face as urban populations rise and face issues related to resource depletion, climate change, job security, and so on.
To understand socio-technical solutions that are available today and are being used to address these challenges.
To theorize on strategies that we can take to ensure a sustainable, regenerative future for urban areas.
This Winter School will cover topics such as
Climate and disaster risk adaptation and management
Interface of the built environment with ecosystems and ecosystem services and a systems perspective to analyze these linkages.
Planning tools, instruments, and processes that are required to foster integrated spatial planning and enhance resilience.
Administration and governance approaches
Nature Based Solutions, Technological Solutions, and Social Solutions to Urban Challenges
The role of entrepreneurs, markets, and policy in solving these challenges
If you are interested in sustainable urbanization, then the school might be appropriate for you. You are likely to meet like-minded people with whom you may forge a lasting relationship and listen to experts from several countries who will discuss the challenges, solutions, and pathways that urban agglomerations can take to become more sustainable.
Schedule
This Winter School will run for twelve days from February 19th until March 1st, 2024, and will have two major work streams. The mornings and afternoons will be reserved for lectures and talks given by Indian and German academics and practitioners. The second workstream is dedicated to project work (see below).
Format
The School will consist of lectures, group work, panel discussions, excursions, and intercultural exchanges.
The Summer School will be a physical event in Chennai, India.
Participants
The course is open to German* and Indian Master’s and PhD. Students. Knowledge of sustainability topics is of advantage. The number of participants is limited to 30 (15 from German Institutions /15 from Indian Institutions).
Selected participants from German universities will receive a mobility scholarship of up to 1.050 €.
Selected participants from Indian universities will be reimbursed for their travel by train (Second class seats).
Selected participants will receive a scholarship to cover living expenses during their stay.
IGCS is covering the costs of stay for all participants in the campus guesthouse (shared rooms) as well as breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the Guesthouse/the venue.
*Non-German students and university graduates can apply if they are enrolled in the course of study at a German university to obtain a degree at a German university. For more information, check the DAAD website: Bewerbungen um ein Stipendium (at the moment only available in the German Language).
Application
Interested students may apply through the Winter School Application Form. The application deadline is 01. December 2023. Applications received after this date will not be considered.
The link is open from 16.10.2023 – 01.12.2023, 7 PM CET/11:30 PM IST. You will need to register first before you enter the actual form. You can switch between German and English. Please read the instructions carefully, including the help notes attached to many entry boxes.
Please prepare the following documents to be uploaded through the form:
CV
Transcript of records of last completed semester/graduation certificate
Letter of recommendation from an academic supervisor. It should state your academic and personal qualifications for participation in the School.
Enrolment certificate
Passport Copy
Motivation Letter
Positive results will be announced at the beginning of December. We kindly ask you to refrain from inquiries about the application status in the meantime. Your data will be deleted if you are not accepted.
The option to receive credit points for participation in the IGCS Winter School needs to be discussed with study advisors.
IGCS Area Coordinators for Land Use, Prof. Dr. Ashwin Mahalingam (Indian Institute of Technology Madras), Prof. Dr. Martina Fromhold-Eisebith (RWTH Aachen University) and Dr. Christoph Woiwode (Indian Institute of Technology Madras.
