People sitting in a conference room looking up at the stage.

Transforming knowledge for just and sustainable futures
Tuesday, 8 Nov 2022
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On the 3rd and 4th of November, the UNESCO Chair in Science Communication for the Public Good came together with other UNESCO Chairs and UNITWIN networks to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Programme in UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, France.

The Programme, gathering 850 university chairs and UNITWIN networks from over 110 countries, has been truly celebrated as a driving force for knowledge sharing and collaborative work, inspiration for change, hope, and imagination for the future. This Programme is a unique pool of excellence and innovation for intellectual and scientific cooperation at the national, regional, and global levels.

In this sense, Stefania Giannini, Assistant Director-General for Education in UNESCO, exposed that all UNITWIN networks and chairs play a key strategic role in bridging knowledge, research, education, and development policies. Moreover, the network of chairs extends multilateralism and transdisciplinarity all over the world, which is the essence of UNESCO.

Ecology and the contribution of knowledge and higher education to sustainability was a key focus of the Conference, along with the need to rethink thinking. During the opening keynote speech, Professor Mbembe, philosopher, political scientist and public intellectual, declared that contemporary epistemology is undergoing a transformation. The centre is being resituated with other ways of inhabiting the earth and repairing it, with other ways of thinking about humanity and decolonial and gender perspectives being included.

The Conference was concluded with the enthusiasm of having strengthened inter-institutional connections, interdisciplinary dialogue, and mobilisation to face the challenges of higher education by 2030. For the UNESCO Chair in Science Communication for the Public Good, as a UNESCO Chair, continues envisioning and pursuing transformative action for higher education and its institutions, creating and sharing knowledge at the global scale.

All UNESCO Chairs and UNITWIN networks were called to take a step deeper so to prepare the ground for change in our Higher Education Institutions and countries. Transformation of Higher Education for just and sustainable futures is moving forward!

See a few photos from the event below. 

Image of a man speaking projected on a larger screen at a conference. The hall is dark with hundreds of people listening to the man speaking on stage.
A woman keynote speaker on stage sitting in a chair at a conference. With the lights darkened over the audience.
Image of a large crowded event with people sitting and facing a stage in a conference.
Blue printed program for the UNESCO 30th anniversary with text "Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education"
Chair-holder, Professor Sujatha Raman (in the middle), made new connections such as with the Chair on Diversity and Inclusion in Global Science lead by Ismael Rafols and Ingeborg Meijer.