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SBE's Spearheads Projetcs

More than ever, the social sciences have a crucial role to play in addressing the major challenges we face today as a society. At SBE, we have taken a transdisciplinary approach to addressing these problems through our research by creating the SBE spearheads.  Their goal is to develop new research strongholds and provide knowledge and innovative ways of thinking to the academic community, companies, policy-makers and society.

Three themes: sustainability, digitalisation and globalisation 

We must foster sustainable development to ensure a strong and fair society, not only for the current generation but also for future generations. Another important challenge is how to respond to the digital transformation taking place across the globe. How we respond to the changes caused by digitalisation will have a major impact. Finally, another challenge we face is globalisation. While this has provided us with a wealth of benefits, it also comes with economic and social consequences, which we must learn to navigate and address.  

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    UM Behavioural Insights Centre

    This spearhead represents a research community of more than 40 scholars who employ and develop insights into behavioral regularities to enhance the effectiveness of public policy and company practice, addressing a broad range of societal challenges.

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    Fair and Smart Data

    This spearhead will use boundary work theory as the transdisciplinary approach over several years to prove and validate the concept of fair and smart data for global sustainability and then scale up for delivery.

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    The Maastricht Observatory on Responsible, Resilient and Sustainable Societies, Economies and Enterprise

    This spearhead aims to mobilise and bring together researchers across Maastricht University and beyond around the challenge of building more resilient, responsible and sustainable  societies, enterprises and economies in Europe and globally as three distinct but related challenges.

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