Mission and research scope

The purpose of the UNESCO Chair for Social Sustainability shall be to promote an integrated system of research, training, information, and documentation on public policies for social sustainable development. It will facilitate collaboration between high-level, internationally-recognized researchers and teaching staff of the University and other institutions in Poland, as well as elsewhere in Europe and North America, Asia, and the Pacific and in other regions of the world.

The specific objectives of our Chair are to:

• provide leading international comparative research on the importance of local citizenship and equity in public policies in establishing social sustainability;
• strengthen ties between researchers working on social sustainability in different parts of the world in the framework of UNESCO’s Management of Social Transformations (MOST) Programme, by organizing joint international research projects, conferences, and seminars; by providing expertise on equality; by providing and measuring indicators to benchmark social sustainability at national and international level; by measuring the effects (gaps) of equality policies; by disseminating research results and scientific publications; and by providing perspectives on the future of social science research in this field;
• expand cooperation with non-academic partners, through MOST, in order to use social research to support public administrations in managing social transformations and creating equitable public policies;
• participate in the international network of professors/experts from partner countries in collaboration with the UNESCO MOST Networks;
• promote international cooperation tracks for social sustainability in local policies by organizing an international MOST summer school on „Designing social sustainability” for Ph.D. students/young scholars, where experiences from different countries on citizen voices and social objectives for development policies can be exchanged;
• integrate UNESCO’s values and goals into the academic and teaching programme of the Doctoral School by introducing additional educational course content and lectures, and by supporting Ph.D. teaching proposals with workshops that contribute to designing and implementing equality policies;
• cooperate closely with UNESCO on relevant programmes and activities to produce joint research with the Social and Human Sciences Sector (SHS) (including possible joint publications); and to ensure that academic outputs (conferences, publications) also benefit the work and objectives of the SHS Sector; 
• cooperate with other UNESCO Chairs on relevant programmes and activities, ensuring North-South and South-South collaboration.