Sep 04, 2025
SustainING. Socially and environmentally sound engineering using the example of mechanical engineering
August 2025 saw the launch of the SustainING. Socially and environmentally sound engineering using the example of mechanical engineering. The aim of the project is to contribute to socially and environmentally sound engineering development and thus to responsible engineering science by integrating social and ecological perspectives into teaching and research. The project responds to the wishes and impulses of students and doctoral candidates who - confronted with multiple social and environmental crises - feel the need for a stronger examination of the responsibility of science and their own position and contributions to a socially and environmentally just world. Criticism of the lack of offerings that place the strongly technology and business-oriented engineering and technical sciences more in relation to society and the environment, including the opportunity to openly address experiences of discrimination and exclusion, which are mostly experienced by female or non-binary people in male-dominated specialist cultures, was expressed, for example, in the interdisciplinary summer school T*ECO*LOGIES by participants from the natural sciences and engineering, as well as the social sciences and humanities, which was able to be realized across disciplines in August 2023 at the Chair of Thermodynamics with gender equality funding from the School of Engineering Sciences. Thanks to two years of funding through the ESF Plus program for innovative university projects to increase student success, events can now be designed with funds from the European Union and tax funds from the budget of the Saxon state parliament that once again take these wishes and requirements into account.
From October 2025, students and doctoral candidates, particularly from the engineering sciences, are cordially invited to engage with society-environment-technology relationships in the field of tension between economic, social and ecological requirements, responsibility in the context of socio-ecological transformation, their own discipline and their future professional/leadership role in science, society and industry from their own social location.
If you would like to be informed directly about SustainING events and offers, please contact Dr. Sandra Buchmüller.
Participation in the events can be remunerated with credit points as part of subject/faculty-specific examination requirements or via the Studium Generale.
