SICSS students host poster sessionFresh perspectives on unsolved problems

4 August 2025, by Miriam Frieß

Photo: CEN/ESRAH Laura Penelope Berta

The five students with the best posters presented their topics at the CLICCS retreat.

What do the fashion industry and our consumer behavior have to do with the climate crisis? How can we say goodbye to fossil fuels? And how are lawyers and climate researchers joining forces in the fight for decarbonization? In an interdisciplinary course at the SICSS graduate  school, Master’s students tackled these and other questions and presented their findings in  a dedicated poster session.

Hands-on, interdisciplinary education on the greatest crisis of our time: that’s the goal of the course “Researching and Shaping Climate Futures.” Here, instructors from various fields, together with Master’s students from the SICSS graduate school, are working to identify key factors in connection with climate change. At the end of the course, the students present their thoughts and findings at a poster session that they hosted.

“I’m impressed by how clearly the students conveyed their content in the posters,” says Simone Rödder, one of the participating instructors. “That’s an essential skill – especially now, when climate knowledge needs to reach society at large.”

The students’ posters address topics ranging from the transformation of the fashion industry to concepts for urban farming. The students also developed new research approaches, e.g. for incorporating ecological systems into Earth system models; assessing the  effects of consumer boycotts; and integrating indigenous knowledge in the context of climate adaptation.

The five students with the best posters were selected by a jury and subsequently presented their work to the CLICCS community at this year’s retreat. “The quality and originality of the posters created by our students in the course of just one semester are impressive,” says Lars Kutzbach, another participating instructor. He was particularly pleased with the interdisciplinary, innovative and critical thinking skills that the Master’s students displayed.

“We had complete freedom when it came to selecting our topics,” reports Valentina Buenfil Romàn. Her poster on the role of consumer boycotts and climate protection was one of the five winners. “All the instructors gave us valuable feedback. It was a unique experience to have course instructors from so many different disciplines there; it gave us a broad range of perspectives on our work.” She’s already looking forward to the poster session for the next course.