Department of social-ecological analysis

The Department of Socio-Ecological Analysis (SE Lab) explores how to better understand the links between society and the environment and how to leverage this knowledge in pursuing sustainability pathways. To achieve this goal in the SE Lab, we:

• Combine approaches from social sciences, humanities and natural sciences,
• Actively engage with actors outside academia (practitioners, policy makers, civil society and NGOs),
• Emphasize knowledge exchange between science, policy-making and practice,
• Carry out research across geographical and cultural contexts (Europe, Africa, Latin America).

Key research topics and questions

Theme 1: Social-ecological scenarios

Social-ecological scenarios describe potential future development of the links between nature and society. Scenario design and analysis help us better understand how future interactions between society and the natural environment may look like and how to make robust decisions in the face of future uncertainty.

A specific type of scenarios, sustainability pathways, help us understand what steps towards sustainability are possible, for which specific actors, which of these steps we prefer as a society, and who should advocate for them.

Related projects: BIONEXT (Horizon Europe), TRANSPATH (Horizon Europe), Just Scapes (JPI Climate Solstice), Coop4Wellbeing (Technology Agency of the Czech Republic), AdAgriF (MŠMT, OP JAK)

Theme 2: Social-ecological resilience

Social-ecological resilience is the resilience of the interconnected systems of society and the natural environment. Its research allows us to understand which social processes influence to what extent we are resilient to global change and its impacts, or which nature-based measures (e.g. urban green areas) contribute to building social resilience. How to imagine resilience?

Related projects: National Institute for Research on Socioeconomic Impacts of Diseases and Systemic Risks – SYRI (National Recovery Project)

Theme 3: The role of knowledge in shaping social-ecological systems

The role of knowledge, its co-production and transfer is key to shaping the social-ecological systems around us and achieving sustainability. Our research explores how knowledge on the links between social and natural dynamics actually translates into the functioning of our society, how to enhance the effectiveness of the knowledge gained, and how science-policy interfaces (e.g. IPBES, IPCC) can contribute in this respect.

Related projects: BIONEXT (Horizon Europe), Coop4Wellbeing (Technology Agency of the Czech Republic), AdAgriF (MŠMT, OP JAK), involvement of the department members in IPBES

Research approaches and methods

The work of the department draws on a range of disciplines at the intersection of social sciences, humanities and natural sciences, including sustainability science, social geography, development studies, environmental studies, anthropology and design. The department focuses on transdisciplinary and participatory research approaches, using mixed methods, stakeholder mapping and analysis, workshops, focus groups, interviews, observations, design approaches and other methods of data collection and knowledge co-design.

Currently Running Projects

BIONEXT

Project BIONEXT: The Biodiversity Nexus – Transformative Change for Sustainability (Horizon Europe) is a research and innovation project that produces new evidence to better understand biodiversity loss and demonstrates how biodiversity underpins every aspect of life; the water we drink, the food we eat, and our health. (Horizon Europe).

TRANSPATH

TRANSPATH: Transformative pathways for synergising just biodiversity and climate actions (Horizon Europe) aims to identify leverage points and associated interventions for triggering and enabling transformative changes at the level of consumers, producers and organizations, thus accelerating diverse transformative pathways towards biodiversity-positive and climate-proofed societies, with sensitivity to social-cultural contexts and rights. (Horizon Europe).

AdAgriF

AdAgriF: Advanced methods of greenhouse gases emission reduction and sequestration in agriculture and forest landscape for climate change mitigation CZ (MŠMT, OP JAK) project focuses on climate mitigation solutions in agricultural and forest landscapes. Our team studies how climate mitigation options can contribute to broader social and environmental sustainability, how robust climate mitigation options are towards potential future development, and how various societal actors contribute to knowledge co-production on climate mitigation options.

SYRI

Our team is currently working on the topic of resilience in the framework of a project called the National Institute for Socio-Economic Impact Research on Diseases and Systemic Risks – SYRI (Next Generation EU, MoEYS, NPO). The aim of our team, which participates in the project together with researchers from other institutions, is to develop resilience thinking among disaster risk reduction actors and increase systemic resilience to natural disasters and extreme weather events in the context of the climate crisis. The SYRI National Institute is a virtual science hub bringing together scientists from the social sciences. It focuses on research on risk situations and mitigation options for problems posed by sudden unexpected events such as climate change, pandemics, war, etc. The SYRI project is part of the National Recovery Plan, No. LX22NPO5101, funded by the European Union – Next Generation EU, Ministry of Education, NPO: EXCELES.

In addition to the above mentioned projects, people from our team are continuously collaborating on other international and national projects running in other departments of CzechGlobe.

Completed projects

JustScapes

Just Scapes: Environmental justice analysis to advance rural landscape transformations in the face of climate change (JPI Climate Solstice) is a trans- and inter-disciplinary environmental justice research project looking at how to implement “just transformations”. There are case studies in the Czech Republic, France and Scotland. (SOLSTICE)

Coop4Wellbeing

Coop4Wellbeing: The role of participatory social-ecological research in strengthening international development cooperation (TA ČR) is an example of a project aimed at strengthening the links between science, applied research and development cooperation. The main objective of our team was to start a process of knowledge transfer from collaborative research on social-ecological linkages to development practice in Zambia. The research focused on topics related to access to land, aspirations of smallholder farmers or perceptions of the social governance system in the Western Province of Zambia. Another important component was the exploration of knowledge transfer between development actors and development project participants. Interesting outputs of the project are unique visualizations of the collected data or a story map from Zambia.

Researchers from the Department of Socio-ecological Analysis (Lenka Suchá, Aneta Seidlová and Zuzana V. Harmáčková) working on research within a development project in Zambia.

Teaching

• Sustainability science in addressing global change (Institute for Environmental Studies, Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague)
• Environmental direct action (Faculty of social studies, Masaryk University)
• Systems Thinking and Design (Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Technology)
• Bioeconomics (Faculty of Economics, University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice)
• Pluralism in Economic Thinking (Faculty of Economics, University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice)
• Critical Topics in Social Dimensions of Global Environmental Change (Faculty of Science, Masaryk University)
• Political psychology and intergroup conflict (Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University)