Department of Culture and Learning

RECAST - Research in sociocultural aspects of sustainability and green transitions

The interdisciplinary research group RECAST provides new knowledge and understandings of sociocultural aspects of sustainability and green transitions. The current sustainability crises are co-constituted through human and social activities and therefore need to be explored through humanities and social science perspectives.

Visit RECAST on LinkedIn

Department of Culture and Learning

RECAST - Research in sociocultural aspects of sustainability and green transitions

Visit RECAST on LinkedIn

RECAST pioneers change towards sustainable societies and green transitions in two ways. Firstly, it points towards just alternatives to current unsustainable conceptualisations and practices for nature, individuals, communities, institutions and societies in and across local, regional and international contexts. Secondly, it complements dominating technological perspectives and taken-for-granted, and ineffective, behaviour change approaches by promoting philosophical, theoretical and methodological resources that both frame the problem, and provide means of analysing it, in ways that hold greater promise for achieving sustainable futures and inclusive and just green transitions. Our research draws on a variety of academic fields within the humanities and social sciences, and we work in collaboration with many stakeholders including students, organisations and businesses to produce knowledge within an array of different topics related to sustainability and green transitions that is useful for academics, practitioners and communities.

The group is based in the following rationale:

Why?

The current sustainability crises are the result of human and social activities, and therefore technological solutions will not be sufficient but need to be complemented by humanities and social science perspectives to activate change towards more sustainable and green societies.
Growth-oriented approaches to sustainability need to be complemented by theory and research that foreground practices and rationales supporting well-being and health of individuals, welfare of the natural world and equality-based and fair strategies for cultural communities.

How?

Developing new concepts and innovative techniques and methods across a variety of perspectives such as political philosophy, ethnography, anthropology, cultural studies, mobility studies, discourse analysis, multimodal and semiotic approaches, etc.
Fostering dialogue and debate amongst actors operating at different scales of intervention (co-design, strategy development, experiments).
Promoting and supporting the voice and agency of actors that would otherwise be excluded from the conversation about the challenges and changes connected to sociocultural sustainability and green transitions.

What

The project Travelling Together explores the intersection of passenger practices and risk management in public transport during the COVID-pandemic (read more)

TransForChange investigates an under-investigated, but fundamental aspect of public transport, namely the rationalities of public transport practices, pursuing two questions: Which passenger identities are empowered or disempowered by which rationalities? How do various rationalities support or hinder increased use of public transport? (read more)

The research project Development Planning in Denmark examines a phenomenon in Danish place development and planning: the many non-statutory plans aiming at better relations between municipalities and associations and investors (read more)

The project Viden til tiden 2.0 (‘Timely knowledge 2.0’) explores opportunities for development and innovation in Danish tourism in the wake of the pandemic (read more)

This project Sustainable Arctic Cruise Communities seeks to address the challenges faced by Arctic communities by generating knowledge about sustainable cruise practices (read more)

EoRPA is a regional policy research consortium funded by national government departments across Europe. It produces comparative research and knowledge exchange on regional policy in 30 countries (read more)

The project The Greenland SubUrban Dream examines how the modern Western dream of suburbia unfolds in a Greenlandic context, focusing on local cultural heritage and traditions, the understanding of nature, community, infrastructure and consumption in relation to the suburban home (read more)

The project Arctic Winter Games 2023 aims to analyse the social and environmental impact of the Arctic Winter Games 2023 and how they impact on representations and collective identity-formation processes (read more)

The project What is mine to give, but not to sell examines when a market in a discretionary good is impermissible and develops a framework for assessing the moral limits of markets, which draws on the luck egalitarian theory of distributive justice (read more)

UPLIFT investigates the role of the producer, policymaker consumer, and their role in stimulating the shift towards a circular plastic economy, the importance of an open dialogue between producers and the policymakers, or concepts such as Extended Producer Responsibility (read more)

FACE-IT provides the first large-scale systematic comparison of coastal areas under variable degrees of cryosphere loss aiming for a holistic understanding of the consequences for Arctic marine biodiversity and Arctic societies (read more)

The project IMAGINE PoCo explores the wide variety of im- and explicit comparisons in political debate, public policy, and scholarly analysis that shape how Greenland imagines independence (read more)

The MAMBO project showcases modern approaches to the monitoring of biodiversity and develops, tests and implements enabling tools for monitoring conservation status and ecological requirements of species and habitats for which knowledge gaps still exist (read more)

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