Connect with inspiring scholars, practitioners and creatives working on transformations towards regenerative and just futures. This unique conference will take place in Sydney, Australia, along with our European Hub Conference in Prague, July 12th - 14th 2023. We also weave in the online conference July 11th-14th, and a hybrid Hub Workshop in Portland, Maine, USA 17th - 19th July.

We offer a transdisciplinary space for scholars, practitioners and artists working on transformations towards sustainability to come together in dialogue and practice. We favor short presentations, long conversations, and practical workshops.

Some conference sessions will be specifically designed to encourage attendance by policy makers and practitioners.

The sweeping transformations needed to make progress towards sustainability require actors to work in partnership.

The importance of partnerships is recognized in the final United Nations Sustainable Development Goal – Goal 17: Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development.

While partnerships are essential to tackle global sustainability challenges, forming and maintaining effective partnerships for transformation is challenging. Actors bring different worldviews, knowledge practices, goals, and narratives to partnerships. They may also enter partnership from very different positions of power. When building partnerships, there are risks of tokenism and colonization.

The Transformations Conference 2023 will explore the role of partnerships in transformative practice. It will look for ways to build partnerships that are more effective, inclusive and transformative. Questions of particular interest include:

• How can we co-design processes and co-produce knowledge for sustainability transformations in ways that reflect our collective vision for a sustainable future?
• What practices, narratives and structures characterize the most effective transformative partnerships? How does this change with scale, from local place-based engagements to global networks?
• What can transformations researchers and practitioners learn from Decoloniality and Indigenous philosophy and practice? How can we decolonize partnerships?
• How does diversity of knowledges, perspectives, cultures, disciplines, and narratives contribute to sustainability transformations? How can we build coalitions that respect such diversity, while developing the unified power to deliver purposive sustainability transformations?
• How can we build inclusive communities of practice that support transformations researchers and practitioners to be more effective together?
• What does leadership mean in the context of partnership? What capacities are needed to lead transformative partnerships?
• How should we evaluate partnerships? What makes a partnership transformative?
• What capacities do researchers and practitioners need to cultivate to be ‘good partners’?