Bringing vehicle sharing to China

by Dr Dennis Zuev (Research Associate, Lancaster University) & Dr David Tyfield (Reader, Lancaster University) Car-sharing is the fastest growing urban mobility innovation worldwide but is yet to take off in Chinese cities. According to a recent…

Moving beyond products to material culture

Prototyping or debating sustainable developments in makerspaces? In the previous blog I introduced some of the diverse ways that makerspaces are helping cultivate sustainable developments. Admittedly, these initiatives do not represent…

Why should we seek sustainable developments in makerspaces?

Community-based workshops like hackerspaces, fablabs and makerspaces, equipped with design, prototyping and fabrication tools have spread rapidly in recent years. Interest in the social, economic and environmental possibilities of these spaces has…

Sustainability: the next 50 years

Accelerating sustainability is a challenge that defines our era. A new Institute of Development Studies (IDS) paper by Hubert Schmitz and Ian Scoones, Accelerating Sustainability: Why Political Economy Matters (pdf),…

BEAM Exchange Research: Call for proposals

BEAM Exchange is investing in a significant research programme to develop new knowledge that is authoritative and accessible around critical questions about market systems approaches. A call for proposals has…

Centre for Bionetworking symposium: have we become too ethical?

The Centre for Bionetworking is running a symposium on research ethics, to be held at the University of Sussex in November. Have We Become Too Ethical? – Managing vulnerability in…

What does systems thinking for rabies control mean for rabies research?

Rabies, in many ways, is an atypical zoonosis. It continues to feature as a priority disease by multiple national as well as international agencies. There is substantial research evidence regarding…

In defence of ethics

Michael Hauskeller writes in defence of ethics: “We are not sitting in an evolutionary elevator that has only two directions: up and down. Instead, there are many different ways of…

Ramaswamy Iyer: remembering a water justice fighter

An obituary of the Indian water policy expert Ramaswamy Iyer has been published in the magazine Seminar. The author is Dipak Gyawali, a member of the STEPS advisory committee, who…