Research Portfolio
Our current research portfolio encompasses
- Working with Nature – Nature-based Solutions, Sustainability and Resilience
- Sustainable Finance, Investment, and Accounting
- Social Entrepreneurship, Enterprise, and Innovation
- Philanthropy, Nonprofit Management, and Governance
- Corporate Governance and Business Ethics
- Complex Systems, Systems Change, and Public Value Creation
- Business and Human Rights
The largest part of the portfolio is the Working with Nature (WWN) research programme. Since 2018, CSI has collaborated in eight funded EU nature-related research programmes, and has coordinated three of these. CSI works in collaboration with partners in these projects. WWN Partners in Trinity include the School of Natural Sciences and Trinity Haus. Externally, WWN partners include Horizon Nua and Empath. Both these entities are SMEs that were founded from Connecting Nature, the first WWN project CSI coordinated.
Current Projects
- C-FAARER is a two-year project funded by Horizon Europe under the Mission ‘Restore Our Ocean and Waters by 2030 and support marine innovators, entrepreneurs, and other pioneers in the Atlantic and Arctic Sea basin in transitioning towards the use of community-driven sustainable business models for regenerative ocean farming.
- GoGreenRoutes is a €10.5m EU-funded project sowing the seeds for increased nature-connectedness across Europe, Latin America, and China. Its multidisciplinary consortium of 40 organisations is pairing participatory approaches and citizen science with Big Data analyses and digital innovation to co-create "Urban Well-being Labs" in six “Cultivating Cities”: Burgas (Bulgaria), Lahti (Finland), Limerick (Ireland), Tallinn (Estonia), Umeå (Sweden) and Versailles (France). These pioneering cities are implementing “nature-based solutions” such as green corridors, linear parks, pocket parks, and shared walkways to enhance the physical and mental health of their urban residents. By maximizing the available public space people can move around the city more actively, enjoy their free time and interact with others, whilst there is also room for restoring ecologically valuable spaces.
- GoNaturePositive! is a collaborative initiative backed by the European Commission dedicated to accelerating awareness and transformative action towards a nature-positive economy among policymakers, investors, businesses and the society. Our partners have come together to address key systemic challenges through research, demonstration and transformational leadership.
- NBS EduWORLD is a Horizon Europe project at the crossroads between nature-based solutions and education, a forerunner project blending the two topics. The result is a unique consortium bringing together researchers, educators, NBS practitioners, and even sports community members with the common goal of creating engaging and locally relevant educational materials centering the environmental, social, and professional merits of NBS.
- NetworkNature is a resource for the Nature-based Solutions (NbS) community, creating opportunities for local, regional and international cooperation to maximise the impact and spread of Nature-based Solutions.
- UNPplus project will address the need for coordinated top-down and bottom-up initiatives, engaging city- and community-driven efforts to complement national sustainability plans. Specifically, 11 academic partners and 5 European cities will explore innovations and barriers related to Urban Nature Plans.
Previous Projects
- Connecting Nature is a consortium of 30 partners within 16 European countries, and hubs in Brazil, China, Korea & The Caucasus (Georgia and Armenia). We are co-working with local authorities, communities, industry partners, NGOs and academics who are investing in large scale implementation of nature–based projects in urban settings. We are measuring the impact of these initiatives on climate change adaptation, health and well-being, social cohesion and sustainable economic development in these cities. We are also developing a diversity of innovative actions to nurture the start-up and growth of commercial and social enterprises active in producing nature-based solutions and products.
- Uforest (full name “European Alliance on Interdisciplinary Learning and Business Innovation for Urban Forests Project) is a three-year Knowledge Alliance project co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Commission. The project promotes a cross-sectoral alliance that brings together universities, businesses and public administrations of often non-collaborative disciplines such as urban planning and architecture, with forestry and urban ecology, as well as with socio-economic and information and communication technologies (ICT). The alliance is the basis for the development of new training and it supports to students and practitioners working towards innovative urban forestry projects.