New project: Sustainability communication on university websites

SDSN Northern Europe has started a project to investigate how universities communicate sustainability. The English websites of 37 universities and colleges among the members in the Nordic countries are being analysed. The aim is to help universities improve their sustainability communication.

Universities play an important role in the transition to a sustainable society through their research and education. Since the universities have this important societal function, communication becomes an important tool for the transition to take place.

SDSN Northern Europe currently has 37 member universities and colleges in the Nordic countries. In a new communication project, we visit all these members’ English websites to see how universities in the Nordic countries communicate about sustainability. We also do a comparison with 10 other universities that have been highly ranked in different sustainability rankings. The ambition is to produce a guide with recommendations and good examples to help universities progress in this area.

The reason why only English websites are included in the project is that sustainability is a global concern, as the 2030 Agenda and the 17 sustainability goals show. Achieving the global sustainability goals requires cooperation across national borders as well as research areas. Also, for students, sustainability is becoming more important than location when choosing university.

The project is initiated by Communications Officer Nina Silow and is run together with Sofia Gesang who is a student from Gothenburg University. Sofia does this project as part of one of her final courses in Global Studies.

The questions that the project tries to answer are:

• Is sustainability a clear priority in the communication of these organisations?
• Is Agenda 2030 a clear framework for how these organisations communicate their sustainability work?
• Is there a clear sustainability work in strategies and plan at the highest organizational level?

We are looking forward to reporting about the findings and recommendations in the coming months.

For more information, please contact:
Nina Silow
Communications Officer
nina.silow@chalmers.se