Reblogged from INNGE's blog, originally posted on Mon, 08/12/2013 - 17:14

In the fall, INNGE and a group of young socio-economic scientists will launch an online seminar series in ecology and economics. The seminar series, which brings together some of the leading thinkers across the two disciplines is intended to increase access and quality of an in-demand topic with broad relevance for early-career researchers.

A rare partnership crossing the natural and social sciences

After 8 months of dialogue behind the scenes, INNGE and the Institute for New Economic Thinking - Young Scholars Initiative (INET YSI) are ready to present our first collaborative initiative. INET YSI is a network of young economic thinkers that comes from a variety of disciplines. Part of the aim of INET YSI is to "... provide a home for anyone who embraces critical thinking, intellectual discourse and a sensitive understanding of the greater political economy, the philosophy of science, and a variety of perspectives and means of modeling economic phenomena". INNGE and INET YSI therefore share the goal of better connecting their respective early-career communities and to increase opportunities for the early-career demographic. This common aim will hopefully provide the foundation for more collaborative initiatives in the future.

Three seminars will kick it off

The first round of the seminar series will feature three kick-off events to bring everybody up to speed with the history of the two disciplines as well as the recent burst of activity. In 2014 we hope to continue the series with more in-depth case studies.

The series also serves as a warm-up to a large sustainability congress in October 2014 hosted by the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU). At this event INNGE and INET YSI hope to be able to offer even more opportunities to the early-career community. Read more about the congress via this link IARU Sustainability Science Congress, and stay tuned for more news about early-career events on this blog.

Here are the dates and topics for the first three seminars. Mark them in your calendar already now:

1. Where do we fall short? [October 8, 2013]

- Deficiencies in conventional ecology and economics in dealing with the deprivation of the environment

2. What has been done to date? [November 12, 2013]

-In this seminar we attempt to provide a broad overview of the work that is currently being done in the field of ecological economics.

3. Informing policy and decision making [December 10, 2013]

-The final of our three seminar kick-off will explore some of the most successful examples where ecology and economics have been integrated to inform policy and decision making.

If the rest of the speakers will be of the same quality as our first confirmation the series should be a real treat: Gretchen Daily from the Natural Capital Project and Stanford University is one of the most successful scientists in integrating ecology and economics to guide policy and decision making. We hope to have more speaker announcments very soon. Stay tuned.