The Seventeenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability will feature plenary sessions by some of the world’s leading thinkers and innovators in the field.

Christian Felber Initiator of Economy for the Common Good, Affiliate Scholar IASS Potsdam, and Author, Vienna, Austria

Ilona Otto Senior Researcher, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany

Marjan Minnesma Founder and Director, Urgenda Foundation, Netherlands

Diederik Samsom Head of Cabinet EC Vice-President Frans Timmermans, Former Politician and Environmental Campaigner, Netherlands

Reimagining the Scholarly Conference

Our mission is to provide a safe, sustainable, and accessible way for us to come together and interact as a Research Network. We are taking on these challenges by offering a blended conference experience, with session types explicitly designed to make the most of both online and place-based social knowledge processes. We are trying to move away from the either/or of place-based or online conferences. And at the same time be ready for the possibility of place based cancelation due to COVID-19. This way we build for our Research Network Members resilient spaces for communication, engagement, and participation.

Blended Presenter Passes are for those who want maximum flexibility, exposure, and planning certainty. You'll be able to present in the place-based and online components, ensuring participation whatever the circumstances. 

Online Presenter Passes are for those who know they will not be attending the place-based component but still want to present, view all content, and engage in meaningful discussion.

You do not need to commit either to a place-based or online presentation at the time of proposal submission. You can present both ways or change your mode of the presentation if your preferences change.

Audience Access –blended or online – allows you to engage in innovative blended session formats, using the best of in-person and online capacities including online conversation spaces and peer-to-peer discussions, and on a human scale. You'll also have access to official programmed in-person or online special events, from welcome receptions, to book launches, and more. And finally, audience members will be officially recognized in the conference program.

Presenter Pages and Open Content

The development team at the Common Ground Media Lab has been working tirelessly to create a next-generation web platform to support a robust blended conference experience – with the online component being a central communicative pillar where participants and presenters attend in-person or only online. Here are some of the features and options showing our commitment to maximizing the exposure and impact of our Research Network Members.

• Linked to profile page on CGScholar
• Displaying abstract summary
• Thematic connection to panelists and peers
• Ability to add digital media: video, sound, other files
• Post event addition of Digital Object Identifiers for persistent discoverability and formal citation as a conference presentation

• Content will be shared with all research network members
• Visible to the public web
• Addition of a Creative Commons License (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International)
• Post event addition of Digital Object Identifiers for persistent discoverability and formal citation as a conference presentation

We welcome the submission of proposals at any time of the year. All proposals will be reviewed within two to four weeks of submission. Again, you do not need to commit either to a place-based or online presentation at the time of submission. You can present both ways, or change your mode of the presentation if your preferences change.

Submit a proposal by 24 September 2020*

*We welcome the submission of proposals to the conference at any time of the year before the final submission deadline.