STEPS director Andy Stirling was a speaker at “Let’s Talk Happiness – beyond GDP”, a conference organised by the Various Interests Group of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) last week. The event assessed the state of affairs, democratic challenges and political commitment to developing indicators on well-being and social progress in the context of a transition to an alternative mode of growth.

Andy also gave an opening lecture at a workshop on “Research methods for investigating complexity of social construction” at Surrey University on 12 June, introducing Multicriteria Mapping (MCM) – a method which the STEPS Centre has used, for example in our project on maize and environmental change in Kenya.

The workshop looked at strengths and limitations of research tools in enabling researchers to follow innovative research avenues or researchers from different traditions to work together.

• Let’s Talk Happiness – beyond GDP (event website)
• Research methods for investigating complexity of social construction (event page)