History

The network lauched an Inaugural Symposium at ECER 2013 in Istanbul.

The effort of creating a network in 2013 on environmental and sustainability education (ESE) research draws upon a number of different activities that grew over the years. This indicates both the need to build such a network to support the academic community throughout Europe and the commitment various actors are willing to give.

In 2009, the international scientific committee of the Swedish National Graduate School in education and sustainable development (GRESD) recommended that the GRESD Board start the process of creating a European node for ESE research. GRESD coordinator Per Sund, was asked to contact EERA. With input from the international Board members, several European partners have since worked on ways to work within ECER as an organizational umbrella. At the same time, arising out of the COPERNICUS-CAMPUS movement of higher education for sustainable development, a research-oriented network of academics was established comprising educational researchers in over 12 different European countries.  It was agreed that Matthias Barth and Marco Rieckmann (Germany) would combine these efforts to put forward a proposal for an ECER network.

To make progress, and in order to build on thematic and conceptual overlaps, and some earlier history of collaboration, interested researchers agreed to work together with members of the network of health education research. This resulted in a successful collaboration at the ECER 2012 meeting in Cádiz, and was very helpful in the planning of the coming meeting in Istanbul 2013. It was also agreed to implement an ESE research network in its own right as a distinctive and unique field of educational research now exists. In November 2012 a group of academics from Sweden, Germany, Denmark and the UK started the work as the main drivers of this network development which will hopefully result in an ESE network in time for ECER 2014.