During the academic year 2022-23 the Fung Global Fellows Program theme will once again be “Sustainable Futures.” The program will examine varied notions and workable practices of sustainability.  We define sustainability expansively.  What does economics teach us about inclusive growth, equality of opportunity, minimizing negative externalities, and the costs of low growth for job creation and skill acquisition?  How can countries, individually and collectively, leverage ecological sciences and engineering to scale energy sources that are both sustainable and practical, encourage environmentally sound consumption patterns, promote resource renewal and protect biodiversity?  What would sustainable global integration look like, and how would countries get there?  How is understanding the behavior of complex systems crucial to sustainability?  How can architecture and engineering build residences, workplaces, cities, and exurbs in smarter ways?  What can countries learn from sociology about supporting family structures, kin networks, and community institutions?  How might information science and technology render virtual public spheres civil while keeping them open, and promote a sense of shared truth?  How can societies use political science to improve governance, raise political participation, and manage a wide diversity of views that healthy societies must have?  Above all, how can countries create and propagate consensus narratives of sustainability that balance interests?

Elke U. Weber
Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment
Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs, Princeton University

Meet this years Fellows