Advanced Training Courses focusing on scientific skills

ATC 1: Assessing Flows of Land-based Products

Introduces how land-based products flow between systems via trade and how to capture and measure such flows quantitatively. Topics: footprint analyses; virtual land, water, and biomass trade; socio-ecological metabolism; material and energy flow analysis (MEFA); flow-based sustainability indictors; commodity chain analysis.

Summary

ATC 2: Place-based Assessments of Land Systems

Explores how local-scale case studies allows for an exploration of underlying causes of land change. ESRs will learn how to assess land systems spatially by GIS/remote sensing, ascribe agency and causality via quasi-experimental setups and agent-based models, and combine qualitative and quantitative research. Topics: case studies; place-based sustainability indicators; driver chains & causality; environmental systems; unit of analysis.

Summary

ATC 3: Advanced Network Science

Introduces ESRs to different network analyses and how these add to and differ from telecoupling research. This includes quantifying network typologies, how they change over time, inter-connectedness in networks, and correlation among sub-networks (e.g. to detect telecoupling) and networks of different kinds (e.g. to detect cause-effect relationships). Topics: Network science and methodologies; trade networks; actor-network theory.

ATC 4: Justice, Governance and Sustainability Analysis

Discusses the concepts of justice, governance and sustainability, and critical thinking on these terms, in order to understand how telecoupled systems include, and emerge from, relations of power, competition, and inequality. ESRs will learn how to address unequal distributions of power to obtain social and ecological sustainable land systems. Topics: global justice and governance; political-ecology; social sustain-ability.

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ATC 5: Modelling Telecoupled Land Systems

Introduces spatial modelling of telecoupled land systems, emphasising models dealing with human-environment interactions across scales and sectors. ESRs will learn how to incorporate agency in land system models, how to assess displacement explicitly, and how to explore impacts of land change under a range of scenarios. Topics: Land system modelling; multi-agent models; down-scaling techniques; uncertainty; input and boundary choices.

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ATC 11: Qualitative Methods

Knowledge: Positionality, representations, and knowledge production in social science, Methods: Interviews and participant observation, Approaches: Qualitative research in a globalized world: Multi-sited ethnography, case studies, zooming techniques and progressive contextualization, Production and analysis: The 1000 page question – field notes, triangulation and hypothesis testing in the field

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Advanced Training Courses focusing on transferable skills

ATC 6: Communicating Science

The skills and strategies to effectively communicate research findings to a non-academic audience including policy makers, will be presented. Time will be reserved for developing individual outreach strategies with guidance by a science journalist.

Summary

ATC 7: Scientific Writing, Open Science and Intellectual Property

Strategies and techniques for drafting scientific texts, pitfalls in scientific writing, self-help techniques, publications outlets, open-science and open-access publishing and Intellectual Property Rights (FP) will be discussed. The last three days will consist of a writing retreat. ESRs will work on their manuscript individually and in groups.

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ATC 8: Proposal Writing

This ATC will provide training in writing grant applications, identifying funding sources, developing project ideas and timelines, and structuring proposals. The course will provide practical examples of proposals, including exercises.

ATC 9: Innovation and Implementation: Societal Entrepreneurship

How can scientists be part of societal entrepreneurship? The ATC will focus on transdisciplinarity, bringing research results into practice, improving innovation capabilities, team based innovation, and innovation management.

ATC 10: Management and Leadership

ESRs will be trained in entrepreneurial sustainability management and corporate social responsibility (CSR). ESRs will learn relevant framework conditions for effective CSR and sustainability management and how sustainability per-formance in and of companies can be measured.