Abstract
This paper outlines an interdisciplinary project we are preparing to launch – one that brings together two complexity-driven initiatives: the first emerges from the urban polycrisis of Nelson Mandela Bay in South Africa, and the second from the coastal legacies and climate futures of the UK’s Cleveland Coast. While rooted in work presently taking place, this project marks a new step in much-needed global comparative research on how communities cultivate an ethos of sustainability amid layered environmental and social exposures. From collapsing infrastructure and air pollution to marine die-offs, cultural erasure, and post-industrial deprivation, we aim to examine how people make sense of, respond to, and reimagine sustainability in contexts shaped by inequality, history, and ecological degradation. Guided by a complexities of place approach, we will co-produce knowledge with local communities, policymakers, and scholars across social, ecological, and cultural domains. Through comparative fieldwork, deep mapping, philosophical critique, and participatory design, we intend to surface the often unseen, embodied, and contested ethos that shapes resilience. Our goal is both practical and ethical: to develop grounded tools and policy frameworks that support just transitions and equitable well-being in overlooked or overburdened places. This session is an invitation to share our strategy, particularly in terms of methods and framing, and ask help in shaping that ambition. We welcome your insights as we move toward building a transdisciplinary network committed to plural, situated, and scalable approaches to sustainability—a politics of place attuned to complexity, and a sustainability lived, debated, and co-created across shifting terrain.
Presenters
Brian CastellaniProfessor and Director, Durham Research Methods Centre; Co-Director, Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing, Social Sciences, Durham University, United Kingdom John Bothwell
Durham University
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2026 Special Focus—Unseen Unsustainability: Addressing Hidden Risks to Long-Term Wellbeing for All
KEYWORDS
Unsustainabilities, Resilience, Engagement, Communities, Comparison, Complexity, Transdisciplinarity, Policy, Methods
