Paper short abstract:

Encountering university students with sociological and anthropological background with the approach of activism, regarding how to create a sustainable (learning) environment, showed to be an effective way to learn about how to do research and facilitate social change at the same time.

Paper long abstract:

"This is an experiment!" was how we introduced the summer course at the Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen (UC), called "Researching social change". 31 students, mainly with an anthropological, sociological or social science background, would work with how UC meet the challenges of climate change and others of UNs 17 sustainable development goals (SDG).

The aim of the course was to learn to identify barriers towards social change at a structural, social, cultural and/or psychological level, and suggest solutions. The students explored this through diverse topics related to UN's SDG that could be investigated directly at UC. The students decided to focus on UC's gender politics, (cantina)food, waste, education and human rights.

We asked what role research has in processes, where social change is going on? And what kind of knowledge can be produced, when we engage in social change, while studying it. This kind of 'academic activism' was also practiced during the lectures, turning the learning environment into a lab for finding sustainable solutions for studying at UC.

Due to a conflict about gender and being non-binary, we learned about the importance of emotions as motivation for social change. We also experienced the need for trust, when striving for social change.

Universities have an obligation to contribute to securing a sustainable future, not only by identifying problems, but also by experimenting with finding solutions. Using the challenges encountered among students and lecturers proved to be an effective strategy to learn about barriers for facilitating social change.