Events and updates

As part of its mission to tackle the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Interdisciplinary Centre for Sustainability Research (ICSR) will facilitate events that bring together our interdisciplinary community to drive innovative solutions for sustainability.

Since the launch of the ICSR, we have been busy hosting workshops with our researchers, developing partnerships with external organisations, and speaking at events across the UK to build awareness and seek out new opportunities.

Interdisciplinary workshops

We held our first workshops in March 2025 which were extremely well attended – so much so that we had to run additional workshops to satisfy demand. These workshops focussed on climate change and were open to academics from all disciplines across the University. The aim was to bring together those people whose research impacts on climate-related SDGs to discuss how we can work in an interdisciplinary way.

Our objectives were to identify areas of strength and opportunity on climate-related SDGs: clean water and sanitation (SDG 6), renewable energy (SDG 7), sustainable cities, consumption and production (SDGs 11 and 12), climate action (SDG 13), life below water and life on land (SDGs 14 and 15), spanning multiple disciplines.

Through facilitated breakout sessions with participants, we were able to discuss and identify areas of common interest within these SDGs, to be brought forward to targeted sandpits, to discuss ways in which we can link University activities to potential interdisciplinary collaborations in SDG work.

Feedback from participants of our first workshops was positive:

I liked the fact that we were pushed towards talking to people we would not normally choose to talk with. That’s good to think outside the box.

I am looking forward to follow on workshops, sand pits and opportunities to develop research across fields.

Showcasing our work

In April 2025, Professor Katie Atkinson was invited to speak at a symposium hosted by our Heritage Institute, Heritage in Transition: Skills and Approaches for Sustainability, co-organised by Dr Ataa Alsalloum from the School of Architecture . The focus of this event was to look at how heritage can address climate challenges and become a catalyst for sustainable solutions more widely. It was great to share ideas with colleagues and explore ways the ICSR’s work can support partnership with other teams and networks around the University.

Katie also represented the University at the Houses of Parliament, showcasing our pioneering work in AI across various disciplines. Managed responsibly, AI has the potential to support cutting-edge sustainable solutions across a variety of sectors. You can hear Katie and Professor Andy Cooper talk about this in the Original Ideas podcast episode on Artificial Intelligence.

Future activity

Looking forward, we will be hosting several sandpit events which will establish relationships and project ideas which can be taken forward into subsequent project development sessions. The first of these sandpit events took place in June 2025.

Katie will also have the opportunity to align the ICSR’s activities with the institution’s wider Sustainability Strategy as a member of the new Sustainability Committee, which embeds sustainability across the pillars of the University's strategic plan, Liverpool 2031.