Right Livelihood College Campuses

Founded in 2013, the Right Livelihood Center at UC Santa Cruz is a partnership between UC Santa Cruz and Right Livelihood. Housed at the Institute for Social Transformation, the Right Livelihood Center links faculty and students with Right Livelihood Laureates for research and education about proven solutions to the world’s most pressing global problems.

The Center has a part-time coordinator who receives guidance from the faculty and managing directors of the Institute. Since our founding, the Center has initiated a student-led club which has a strong emphasis on connecting activism to academia.

Activities

• Build leadership skills by joining the Right Livelihood Club at UCSC.
• Connect with laureates and UCSC faculty to conduct community-based research.
• Attend a conference or webinar.
• Take a course on Right Livelihood.
• Study abroad — use our website to stay updated on potential opportunities.
• Intern for the RLC at UC Santa Cruz — use our website to stay updated on potential opportunities.

Past highlights

Links

rightlivelihood.ucsc.edu

YouTube channel

Latest posts

The Center for Development Research (ZEF), an independent research institute at the University of Bonn, became a RLC Campus in 2010. ZEF conducts transdisciplinary and applied research on crosscutting socio-political, economic and environmental problems in Africa, Asia and Latin America with the overall goal to contribute to truly sustainable and just development.

Since 1997, ZEF runs the PhD Program ‘Bonn Interdisciplinary Graduate School for Development Research’ which is unique in terms of its interdisciplinary set up, applied and international character and size – with around 140 PhD students from more than 70 countries.

Till Stellmacher is the coordinator of RLC Campus Bonn and has been working with issues of human rights and environmental protection since the 90s. The highlight of working with the RLC according to Till are the workshops with people coming from different parts of the world, to see the Laureates and the younger academics interact, share contacts, presentations and information.

We have a huge alumni network where we see that the younger people who did their PhD several years ago, are in my view now in the position to make important decisions worldwide. So that’s really inspiring to me.

Activities

• Transdisciplinary in-person workshops — since 2011, the RLC Campus Bonn at ZEF organises two transdisciplinary in-person workshops for several days per year in Bonn with Right Livelihood Laureates, other experts and PhD students from all over the world. The workshops revolve around the two thematic foci of rural development and sustainable agriculture, and sustainable use and conservation of natural resources.
• Applied research projects — the RLC Campus Bonn conducts 3.5 year-long applied research projects worldwide together with Laureates, their organizations and many other stakeholders in the fields of environmental sustainability and social justice. The projects involve joint conferences, publishing of joint papers, exchanges and visits to each other’s institutions as well as joint PhD projects.

Latest posts

In 2009, the Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies (LUCSUS) became the RLC’s first European partner campus. LUCSUS is a platform for education, research and cooperation inside and outside academia on questions related to sustainable development. The education consists of the international master’s program in Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science (LUMES) and the Master of Science Programme in Climate Change and Society (LUCAS).

Together with Right Livelihood, LUCSUS organises forums for parliamentarians, journalists, diplomats, academics and representatives from civil society groups to discuss different sustainability challenges with RLA Laureates who work with these issues on a daily basis. In connection with the yearly Right Livelihood Award ceremony, LUCSUS invites the Laureates to give an open lecture in Lund.

Activities

• Lectures and seminars with Right Livelihood Laureates
• Annual fieldwork grants for the LUCSUS MSc theses in connection with the Laureates’ work to foster student engagement directly with the change-makers
• Continued research collaboration with The Land Institute, Right Livelihood Laureate in 2000, and a member of its Board of Directors

Past highlights

Links

lucsus.lu.se/right-livelihood-college

Latest posts

The Right Livelihood Centre of the University of Zurich (RLC) acts as a hub between Right Livelihood, the University of Zurich (UZH) and the public. The RLC contributes to teaching, continuing education and public relations to make the Laureates’ knowledge and their practical work accessible. At the same time, the centre helps to transfer academic research in the area of human rights and sustainability into the work of Right Livelihood.

The foundation for the cooperation of Right Livelihood with the University of Zurich is the annual lecture, which took place in 2008 for the first time at the University’s aula. Ever since, a current Laureate holds a public lecture about their work and knowledge in November or December every year.

Campus coordinator Aline Steinbrecher is a historian who has always been passionate about transdisciplinary issues. Students at RLC Zurich can moderate public lectures, produce podcasts, or create short reels — formats that Aline says are increasingly popular.

All our events are public events. This means this is also the moment where academia, as well as Right Livelihood, is open to a wider interested public.

Activities

• Transdisciplinary teaching formats related to the work of Right Livelihood Laureates, open to students from all faculties at the University of Zurich.
• Annual public lectures by Laureates held in Zurich. Registration and information is open to everyone.

Links

sustainability.uzh.ch — RLC

Latest posts

At the first regional conference of Latin American Laureates, held in Colombia in July 2013, RLA Laureate (1983) Manfred Max-Neef proposed that the Universidad Austral de Chile become the first Right Livelihood College Campus in Latin America. Manfred Max-Neef had a long association with the university, serving as the Rector and later as the Director of its Economics Institute. In November 2013, the Universidad Austral became the sixth RLC campus and the first in Latin America.

The current campus coordinator is Prof. Dr. Felix Fuders, who, following Manfred’s footprints, also serves as director of the Economics Institute. Based on Manfred Max-Neef’s human scale development approach, Felix designed an endogenous development index that measures development as the subjective perception of the satisfaction of fundamental human needs.

We are delighted that Universidad Austral De Chile is partnering with us to host the sixth campus of the Right Livelihood College and the very first campus in Latin America.

Activities

• Interested students are welcome to apply to the master’s program in Human Scale Development and Ecological Economics, which was co-founded by Dr. Fuders.

Links

rlcollege.uach.cl

Latest posts

Founded in 1613, the National University of Cordoba (UNC) is the oldest institution of higher education in Argentina. The campus has a long history of advocating democracy and human rights, with its students launching a movement for a democratisation of academic faculties in Argentina in 1918.

The campus joined the Right Livelihood College in 2016 at the Faculty of Psychology, which is home to over 10,000 students annually. Its activities have been heavily led by Professor Raul Montenegro, an environmental advocate and 2004 Right Livelihood Award Laureate, who remains the director for the Cordoba Campus.

Activities

• Supporting the production of research by postgraduate students on issues related to the environment and human health.
• Workshops and courses on non-governmental community museums of ethnology and archaeology, especially those dedicated to Comechingones and Sanavirones Indigenous peoples, and on how to improve sustainable happiness.
• Role playing educational activities on a variety of topics such as Cordoba’s native forests and gender issues.

Past highlights

Latest posts

The University of Port Harcourt in Nigeria has been a member of the Right Livelihood College since 2013 and was the second member on the African continent. RLC Port Harcourt is based at the Faculty of Social Sciences and is co-hosted by the Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), a think-tank and advocacy organisation founded by Right Livelihood Award recipient Nnimmo Bassey. Together, the two hosts connect scholars with changemakers locally and around the world.

The coordinator of the campus, researcher Fidelis Allen, has been active in academia for 30 years focusing on participatory analysis of social, political, environmental and economic issues, particularly in the Niger Delta. In the future, the campus hopes to create targeted trainings for student members to be continuously engaged in the community both during and after they graduate.

Many of my students have had to choose the seminar papers and even the PhD research topics from the areas that the college is interested in. It has helped to expand the boundaries of knowledge.

Activities

• Annual public lectures — gathering local and international changemakers to learn from, and engage with, Right Livelihood Laureates
• Meetings with students about ways to engage in the work of local environmental and social movements, connecting the struggles to a globally connected justice movement

Latest posts

The newest Right Livelihood College campus opened at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India. Tata is an institution of excellence in higher learning, which since its inception in 1936 has consistently worked for the promotion of sustainable, equitable and participatory development, social welfare and social justice.

The Centre for Livelihoods and Social Innovation is a facility at the School of Social Work that aims to emerge as a learning-cum-innovation centre to develop meaningful livelihood initiatives for the poor and marginalised in the country. The Centre also offers an M.A. Social Work programme in Livelihoods and Social Entrepreneurship. RLC Mumbai aims at a better integration of the South Asian Laureates’ work and knowledge with Tata’s students and research.

Latest posts