The Sustainability and Climate Emergency theme encompasses projects that examine the interrelationship between human society and the natural environment. The overall aim of the theme is to champion projects that seek to improve that relationship and enable human societies to live more within planetary boundaries and with greater resilience to a changing climate. The social sciences are vital in generating the insights needed for stakeholders at all levels to support just and equitable transitions toward more sustainable and resilient futures. As these are some of the most pressing challenges of our time, they require diverse insights, and this theme therefore supports a diverse range of projects with different epistemological and methodological stances. However, projects share a common focus on generating evidence to help societies navigate the changes we are facing. 

To that end, we welcome applications that stem from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds; however, there is a need for projects that can skilfully integrate thinking from different disciplines (and particularly between social sciences and other disciplines such as natural science and engineering) to generate insights that go beyond the sum of the parts.

Methodological approaches in this theme are similarly broad, encompassing qualitative and quantitative approaches across a range of scales (from localised case studies to global datasets). We particularly welcome projects that can bridge different methodological traditions through novel and robust frameworks.

Given the urgent nature of sustainability and climate challenges, we particularly welcome projects with an outward focus – those that support meaningful exchange with external partners and have a genuine desire to see project results used beyond their immediate empirical and academic context.