Climate Justice and IE Programme Workshop

On May 23rd, 2025, students, PhDs, and some staff from the MSc Industrial Ecology program came together for two interactive workshops focused on one central theme: Connecting Climate Justice with Industrial Ecology.

Over the past two years, a group of master's students has been working on the topic of Climate Justice. They felt like the topic was crucial to Industrial Ecology, but that it was missing from the existing curriculum.

The Master aims to teach us to take a systems thinking approach, in order to make holistic analyses of complex sustainability issues. However, how can you truly do so without the intersectional relationships between the climate crisis, racism, health, economics and equity? Are you then truly a transformative changemaker with a systemic view?

About a year ago, the students shared their concerns through a petition. From there they discovered they were not alone in experiencing this gap in the educational program, receiving more than 80 signatures on their concern. Hence, they set out to organize student-led workshops, both internally and on the International IE day to further understand the intersection of Climate Justice and Industrial Ecology.

The three students have decided to better ground their gut feelings by conducting a set of parallel Capita Selecta. As part of their process, they hosted the interactive workshop on connecting Climate Justice to the curriculum of the Industrial Ecology Master’s.

Hosted in Van Steenis, each 1.5-hour session was structured around collaborative discussion and reflection. Participants worked in small groups, using course-specific worksheets to reflect on how core IE courses address (or could better address, or shouldn’t address) issues of justice, especially climate justice.

In total, 21 participants engaged across both workshops. Conversations were rich, reflective, and constructive, resulting in concrete ideas of how an IE curriculum including Climate Justice could be shaped. We feel greatly inspired by the workshops. It was a great opportunity to see the different perspectives and positions coming together to brainstorm together so constructively, with facts and figures, but more importantly, with feeling, emotion and engagement. Both we researchers and SHIFT are very grateful for this opportunity to heard from students/PhD/staff”

This focus group is just one step in an ongoing movement within the program to embed justice at the heart of sustainability. The three Capita Selecta together aim to bridge the gap between Climate Justice and Industrial Ecology and enhance the MSc Industrial Ecology curriculum of Leiden University and TU Delft to make everyone a true and meaningful Industrial Ecologist. Thanks to all who joined! And if you missed it, stay tuned for future opportunities to get involved.

Want to know more or get in touch?

Reach out to t.k.d.whenu@student.tudelft.nl

Laure Herpain

Sevi Kocagöz Castelli

Tadé Whenu