While the world has been sadly trying to manage the global pandemic, interest in The Global Academy has increased substantially. This may not, of course, be a coincidence. Many people (researchers among them) have found themselves questioning the value of the wider contribution they are making as individuals in the context of the pandemic and the all-pervasive impact it has had, and in many countries, continues to have.

For researchers, being able to link their work to the wider global agenda of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (the SDGs, or Global Goals) can be seen as a way of compounding the impact of their work.

This has been good news for The Global Academy. Our latest Briefing gives more detail, but the key pieces of information are:

  • Now over 230 researcher pages on our website – which itself was re-launched in April 2021 to make it easier to find researchers working on specific Global Goals, or at work in specific countries.
  • Our first research Group also went live in April 2021, the fabulous ‘Low Harm Hedonism’ Group at the University of Queensland doing great work on SDG Goal 12.
  • Also our Twitter feed is becoming increasingly busy with now well over 2600 followers and lists for the exclusive use of Global Academy members to help them communicate with each other about the Global Goals.

More Plans

We never stand still at The Global Academy and we have a number of current pieces of work ‘on the go’.

  • We are excited to be organising our first online event for researchers interested in the Global Goals. This first event will be focused on Goal 12 ‘Responsible Consumption and Production. More events focused on other Goals will follow.
  • We will be bringing you up-to-date with our work with the SDG Game which during the last year has been developed into an online version which we have used with student groups, and we have ourselves developed a World first ‘outside and unplugged’ version too which has just had been played successfully for the first time.
  • We are also involved with a piece of research being led out of Leuven University in Belgium on research and SDGs

We look forward to bringing you more on all of these in our next Briefing.