Sustainability Education and Systems Thinking: A Journey of Synergies and Challenges

This chapter looks at a “circular” Master’s dissertation journey. It is framed around the experience of a former UCL Master’s student who brought to the class a rich background and experience in the sustainability and energy spheres from her home country, and then went onto the global stage of energy sustainability and just transitions. The former student and dissertation supervisor relate their discoveries and experiences. This recollection opens further the box of the international student’s experience, made of successes but also of significant challenges. The educational journey of international students from developing countries is still accompanied by many hurdles, which can eventually impact on higher education’s full potential as a provider of circular sustainability. In addition, working in interconnected and complex problematics such as climate change, biodiversity, socio-technical transitions, and geopolitics can bring feelings of helplessness in both students and experienced scholars. In the last section, the conversation introduces the methodology of Systems Thinking, favoured by the authors as both a research practice and life philosophy. The burden of “climate anxiety”, and the mental charge associated with the disciplines related to socio-political sciences is evoked and looked at with a generational and gendered lens.