AMBITION's Final Sustainable Innovation School Successfully Concludes in Delft
The AMBITION project’s final Sustainable Innovation School in Delft brought together doctoral students from Europe and Africa between 27-31 May, 2024, for a week of interdisciplinary workshops and field visits, focusing on the governance of just and sustainable urban transitions.
The AMBITION project, funded by the European Union’s Erasmus+ initiative and Movetia, the Swiss Agency for Mobility and Exchange, is a collaborative effort aimed at fostering partnerships between European and African Universities. It seeks to cultivate future leaders in sustainable development by providing an educational programme where doctoral students from diverse backgrounds learn and work together on different sustainability issues.
After two successful Sustainable Innovation Schools last November in Nairobi, which were held at Strathmore University, the participants of the programme reunited this year for a week in May at TU Delft, where they engaged in an intensive programme focused on the governance of just and sustainable urban transitions. Organised by TU Delft Professor Roberto Rocco together with TU Delft I Global Initiative, the programme included lectures, workshops and field visits to the Municipality of Amsterdam and The Green Village, a living lab for sustainable technology, allowing participants to gain insights from experts and practitioners on urban sustainability, spatial and environmental justice, and socio-technical transitions.
“We are a group of people sharing a similar way of being in the world. We care about others. We care about the earth. Although we are working in different research fields, we have similar goals. We want to make the world better.”Yizhao Du (TU Delft)
For doctoral students, the AMBITION project offers the opportunity to develop an international and interdisciplinary network, gaining diverse perspectives on sustainability challenges. What began in 2022 as a joint project proposal has evolved into a thriving community of collaboration, learning, and friendship. Looking ahead, the doctoral students are preparing to engage high school students in Africa and Europe, aiming to inspire the next generation of sustainability advocates.
“AMBITION is about bringing together people from all over the world to work on topics of sustainable development that affect us all, but that we experience differently. It is about bringing different skills and capabilities together to be able to design what we think would make our world better. And then to pass on the knowledge to other people.”David Pfeffer (ETH Zurich) and Faith Siva (Strathmore University)
AMBITION Sustainable Innovation School in Delft
AMBITION is a joint project between the IDEA League Universities Chalmers University of Technology, ETH Zurich, Politecnico di Milano, RWTH Aachen University, TU Delft, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana, and Strathmore University in Kenya, and the Nigerian NGO Green Growth Africa Sustainability Network.