2009 Summer academy on social vulnerability

The Summer Academy provides a small number of outstanding PhD candidates from all over the world a platform to present and discuss their research with leading international experts and scholars from the United Nations University and Munich Re Foundation. It is designed to advance the science of social vulnerability by discussing “state of the art”, research needs and strategies to address academic, policy and practical knowledge gaps. The topic of the 2009 Summer Academy builds on the first three Academies, which focused on vulnerabilities and resilience-building in relation to water (2006), mega-cities (2007) and environmental migration (2008).

The Academy 2009 will integrate the role of environment and the managed landscape, socio-economic processes of displacement and migration, and the institutions that mediate between sustainability and collapse. Further on, it will explore plausible futures where a complex of vulnerability tips into a humanitarian crisis. Conversely, we also intend to explore the potential for scaled up improvements in livelihoods, those plausible futures that achieve sustainability and a substantial reduction in vulnerability. With the focus in 2009 on the run-up to the Copenhagen Global Climate Summit COP15, climate change will be a central issue.

The entire working week will be devoted to a variety of academic exercises, including simulations representing real-world situations. The outcome of the Academy will be presented to international stakeholders.