During the strategy period, research and teaching will draw inspiration from the themes that will spur collaboration between fields and disciplines and renew research and learning. Collaboration will require insightful discipline-specific expertise, and interdisciplinary cooperation will lead to novel research directions. The themes not only promote collaboration, but also inspire research and teaching that seek solutions to major global problems.
What does wellbeing entail from an individual’s perspective? This theme explores the essentials of a meaningful life and the building blocks, changes and effect of a society that promotes wellbeing on an individual’s life. The theme addresses the meaning of life, happiness and both mental and physical wellbeing. Besides including human health, the theme focuses on environmental and animal health and their interrelations and interactions.
Communities and their activities and interactions, as well as social issues play a crucial role in the building of a humane and fair world. This theme also highlights obstacles to fairness by examining inequality, discriminatory structures and the sharp divides caused by polarisation, among other things. At the same time, technological advances, especially the opportunities and challenges brought about by them, offer new research initiatives. This theme opens up new opportunities to understand humanity and our surrounding world. The idea "unerstand humanity and our world to change them" establishes a strong link to societal impact.
When investigating a sustainable and viable future for our globe, the intersections of the natural world and human actions emerge as questions of key importance. Climate change, the loss of biodiversity and dwindling natural resources present challenges that are also related to human actions, wellbeing and economics. We approach this theme from the perspective of the natural sciences from geology to ecology and examine it from societal, social and human angles.
This theme cultivates limitless curiosity, surprising connections and trailblazing research while creating novel interdisciplinary links. We renew our thinking and deepen our understanding by bringing together the smallest of particles and the broadest of philosophical questions. The discovered links invite us to diverge from our usual path and explore the intriguing scientific and conceptual questions of our time by merging aspects of philosophy, mathematics, theology, folklore, cosmology, neuroscience and cognitive science.