STOCKHOLM RESILIENCE CENTRE
Our research framework Our curiosity-founded research is driven by an interest in identifying challenges as well as opportunities for change
HUMAN SOCIETIES are reliant on a healthy and resilient biosphere providing suitable living conditions. At the same time, human actions are a major force in shaping the dynamics of the biosphere and the broader earth system. Social conditions, health, culture, democracy, power, justice, equality, matters of security and ultimately survival are interwoven with the earth system and its thin biosphere in a complex interplay of local, regional and worldwide dependencies. It is an intertwined system of people and planet. Our core focus is to advance research in the frontier of biosphere-based sustainability science, applying a socialecological approach and resilience thinking. The approach that the SRC takes – that humans are part of the biosphere – informs and guides our research, enabling cohesion, unity of purpose and the distillation and synthesis of diverse theories, methods and data. Inductive and deductive work, practice and theory continuously interact.
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SRC’s organisational design is to frame creativity through the biosphere-based approach, guiding and defining a problem space in which creativity and innovation are encouraged to flourish. It involves developing and implementing research strategies, organisational structures and team-building processes that enable, support and stimulate creativity and cutting-edge research, ranging from disciplinary to interdisciplinary to transdisciplinary. Significant time is devoted to encouraging interaction and to stimulating sharing of ideas at the frontier of sustainability science and resilience thinking. Our research aims at capturing significant patterns and processes of the Anthropocene, using complex adaptive systems and resilience thinking as core perspectives, developing theory and methods, and experimenting and exploring transdisciplinarity for biosphere stewardship and transformations towards sustainability. The research topics
