Maastricht Sustainability Institute (MSI)
With the integration of the Maastricht Sustainability Institute (formerly known as ICIS), within the School of Business and Economics (SBE), not only a new name has been chosen, but also an active contribution to SBE’s 'Vision 2025' is foreseen in which Sustainable Development, Digitisation, and Globalisation are focal areas.
As sustainability scientists, we aim to support sustainable development at the local and regional levels, thus contributing to global sustainability too. Because sustainability challenges are complex and normative, we opt for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches in which we collaborate with different disciplines and stakeholders. We master a diversity of theories and methods to work at the interface of science, policy and society. Knowledge brokering, boundary work and action-research are concepts that suit us well. Our research is scientifically sound and societally relevant.
Furthermore, our expertise is reflected in our sustainability education at bachelor, master and PhD level. Our multidisciplinary staff and international student group form a close-knit learning community.
In addition to our international and national orientation, we are committed to addressing sustainability issues in the region by means of our Maastricht Sustainability Hub.
Maastricht Sustainability Institute, your knowledge partner for sustainable development!
Newsletter
Interested in our newsletter Sustainability Science and Policy?
Fast facts
- Research, education and learning for sustainable development
- Sustainability Assessment, Innovation, and Governance
- Contract research for policy and society
- Graduate School MUST: PhD and Master's programme
- Led by Prof. Frank Boons
News
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Maastricht Sustainability Institute (MSI) of Maastricht University School of Business and Economics (SBE) has successfully applied for funding in the ‘Driving Urban Transitions’ program of NWO/ JPI Urban Europe. Three new transdisciplinary projects with international partners have recently started...
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Fossil subsidies undermine climate policy, says Patrick Huntjens and other colleagues in an opinion article.
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The Maastricht Sustainability Institute recently organized the Presentation and Network Day as a culmination of the "Integrated Sustainability Project" (ISP) course, which is a key component of the Master's programme in Sustainability Science, Policy and Society. The event, held on June 1 at Tapijn...
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Much of everyday life consists of routinized and habitual activities that use energy, such as heating the home. Heating (space and water heating combined) accounted for about 80% of the final energy consumption of households while about 90% of homes in the Netherlands used natural gas for heating in...
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Have you heard about the Climate Fresk Workshop at UM? Three workshops have already taken place, with a total of 200 students and staff participating. The experiences and reactions have been very positive and the taste is for more.
Calendar
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09 Nov09:30 - 15:00
Master’s Open Day
We hope to welcome you on campus at our next Master's Open Day and give you a good impression of what studying at Maastricht University is all about.
Ron Cörvers
“The effects of sustainability labels on producers have scarcely been studied, let alone in Indonesia. We’ll be filling this gap by looking at how Indonesian producers experience the daily reality of sustainability labels, thus shining a light on the Southern perspective in an otherwise predominantly Western story.”
Prof. René Kemp
"Complex global problems such as sustainability are on the rise, not to mention problems like climate change, declining social cohesion and lack of citizen participation. “These are big issues for which the national government isn’t taking responsibility.”
Prof. Pim Martens
“I don’t know if it’s feasible, but in my ideal world zoos are places where you nurture endangered species with a view to releasing them into the wild. But that wouldn’t be a park you could let people into."
Prof. Pieter Glasbergen
"In my research program on partnerships we aim to better understand and define the roles and functions of various types of collaborations of businesses, nongovernmental organizations and governments, the architecture of the arrangements, the conditions that determine their performance, and the implications in terms of governance for sustainable development."
Prof. Marjan Peeters
Finding optimal regulatory approaches for a dramatic reduction of greenhouse gases at the right governmental scales across the world is at the heart of the debate on climate change. Not only efficiency and effectiveness, but also questions of equity and transparency have to be addressed, next to the fundamental question of who is going to decide the stringency and content of such climate law: the legislator or the courts?
Research
MSI works from sustainability science, an emerging field trying to bring together science, policy and society to find answers to sustainable development challenges and to formulate new pathways to contribute to sustainability.
MSI researchers are involved in the conceptualization of sustainable development (making it operational in a meaningful way); the study of systems of governance (how sustainability issues are taken up by different actors); evaluating sustainability initiatives in business, policy and civic society; and theorizing and empirical analysis of innovation trajectories and sustainability transitions.
Research Lines
- Sustainable Urban Development
- Social Innovation and Transformation
- Partnerships for Sustainability Certification
Education
The Maastricht University Graduate School of Sustainability Science & Policy (MUST) is based at MSI, which offers a PhD programme and Master programme to study the complex challenge of sustainable development in an international and interdisciplinary ambience. MSI provides also sustainable development courses at Bachelor level for other units at Maastricht University.
The PhD programme offers the opportunity to specialise in a sustainable development topic. In the Master programme special attention is paid to sustainability assessment in the broader context of innovation and governance for sustainable development.
Topics MSI focuses on:
- health and environment
- biodiversity and ecosystem services
- energy, transport and climate
- eco-innovation
- sustainable business models
- sustainable urban development
- global certifying partnerships for agricultural commodities