Join us for the oikos in (your) Residence!

Author: J. Christopher Proctor
oikos International Curriculum Research Manager

This summer the oikos in Residence will be taking place in YOUR residence, with a series of 5 events held online between July 9th and July 23rd. 

The oikos in Residence is a new event that promotes research related to economics and business education. The sessions focus on topics like building arguments for curriculum change, working towards local curriculum change, doing curriculum reviews or student surveys, and designing options for alternative curricula. 
Sign-up here.

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oikos International

posted June 17, 2020

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VR4Sustainability: How Virtual Reality can change our behaviors

Author: Marcelo Veloso
oikos International Sustainability Fellow

From psychotherapy to education, Virtual Reality has become a tool applied in many fields. In fact, this technology provides the opportunity to embody, live, and understand realities and environments that are physically distant. 

However, VR may pose some ethical problems. In fact, as Maximilian Stoller discussed, VR uses subconscious pathways and manipulates people in making them believe they are somewhere else. This is also a learning opportunity: users may become more aware of how they can be tricked into believing something.

Philippe Bertrand showed, using the “Machine of another” video, how VR can generate illusions. VR can be designed to create empathy, by making you believe you’re in someone else’s body or in another place. This not only changes users’ behaviour during the experience but can help reduce biases. The effects remain even after the experiment, as people tend to have more altruistic attitudes. 

Using VR is an immersive and individual experience, without distractions. Pedro Kayatt had an exhibition, Dinos do Brasil, during which visitors would go on a trip to prehistorical Brazil. This shows the potential of VR applications for teaching and training and can bring academia and practice closer. 

VR has been a crucial tool for Bruno Weis and his team who made a short-film with the objective to create empathy towards socio-environmental issues and allow viewers to travel to the Amazon. It also helps deconstruct idealized versions of how people live in their traditional communities, anchoring them in the present. This kind of production has a significant impact on people and is an intensive and unique experience. 

VR has proved to be an important tool to create empathy and allows its users to be someone else, somewhere else. Thanks to sinking costs, VR could be mainstreamed within a few years along with a better understanding of the high non-monetary value it has.

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oikos International

posted June 17, 2020

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Transition to renewable energy by 2050 – is it possible?

We are happy to present you with the second event of our lecture series “Transformation – what is holding us back?”, in which we will be discussing possibilities and limits of socioeconomic change concerning different topics.

On Wednesday, the 24th of June, we will go into the second round, talking about the possibility of a renewable energy transformation by 2050 with IRENA, the “International Renewable Energy Agency”. IRENA is an intergovernmental organisation, supporting countries in their transition to a sustainable energy future in their role as a principal platform for international cooperation, while being a carrier of knowledge on renewable energy concerning policy, technology, resource and financial aspects.

The Director of IRENA´s Innovation and Technology Centre and IRENA´s Renewable Energy Roadmaps Team will go into depth on the key technologies and trends from their Global Renewables Outlook. This report outlines the investments and technologies needed to decarbonise the energy system in line with the Paris agreement. It also explores deeper decarbonisation options, aiming to eventually cut carbon dioxide emissions to zero. The talk will consist of a 45 minute presentation, giving us enough time for a detailed discussion afterwards.

We would be very happy to see a lot of you joining our talk so that we can learn about and discuss this important topic together!

The link to the Zoom Conference will be announced here shortly before the talk.

Looking forward,
your Oikos Köln Team & AK Plurale Ökonomik Köln

Visit the facebook event page here.

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oikos International

posted June 16, 2020

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Kneipendialog – Corona & Sustainability

Thursday July 16
8 – 11 pm CEST

via Zoom

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oikos International

posted June 16, 2020

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30 seconds with the oikos PIR Team

This month oikos International welcomed two new members to the Management Team as a part of the Positive Impact Rating. John Watt and Autumn Irving-Carr will be taking the roles of PIR Outreach and Marketing Manager and PIR Student Engagement Coordinator respectively. Today we are delighted to give them the opportunity to present themselves to the community.

John Watt

Hi, I am John, the new PIR Outreach and Marketing Manager for oikos. I am excited to get started with this role, as I am passionate about ensuring that everyone has the knowledge and resources to be sustainable leaders and influencers. I previously worked for an international sustainable city network, empowering public authorities with the tools and knowledge to purchase more sustainable solutions for their needs. This included exploring green, circular, ethical and healthy choices for goods and services. It ensured cities could use their buying power to influence the private market to provide sustainable options. I hope to apply the same principles and approaches to students and universities through PIR,
supporting and collaborating to ensure that everyone has the means to be a sustainable change-maker!
I am always keen to hear ideas and work together on making them happen, so you can contact me at any time at john.watt@oikos-international.org

Autumn Irving Carr

Hi everyone!
I’m Autumn and I have recently joined oikos as a volunteer PIR Student Engagement Coordinator. I am looking forward to joining an organisation which greatly contributes to the development of individuals, institutions, and society.
I live in Newcastle Upon Tyne in the UK, where I study Business Management at Northumbria University. I have always been passionate about contributing to a better society, empowering others and creating a
positive impact. Whilst studying as a mature student, I realised that I could combine my values and inspirations with the professional skills I gained before university. Studying at university allowed me to turn my values into actions and see the benefits of empowering students. I worked alongside academics to enhance lecture materials to bring further awareness to sustainable development goals, liaised between the management team and students to represent student voices and raised local awareness of modern slavery practices through a PRME writing competition.
I’m looking forward to working with such an inspiring team! Please feel free to drop me an email any time, I would love to hear from you: autumn.irving-carr@oikos-international.org

Author: Stefan Krasic
oikos International Communication Manager

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oikos International

posted June 15, 2020

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oikos Vienna x oikos Graz – The Power of Cross-Chapter Cooperation

The spring of 2020 no doubt presents a turning point which made many events worldwide not only more accessible to everyone online, but also putting those organized online head to head with traditional formats.

The shift from in-person events into webinars took the world by storm and oikos was no exception. With a lot of experience behind us of working and coordinating projects in a virtual space, it’s safe to say oikos was to some extent a pioneer in working entirely online. This made the transition of oikos International projects from on-site to online a rather smooth one and the International team was quick to not only adapt, but also do its part in providing oikos local chapters with resources which would allow them to do the same.

Not long ago we featured a story of a cross-chapter collaboration between the oikos Hong Kong and Suzhou chapters organizing a case study competition in an online format. Today we’ll be going halfway across the world to Austria, digitally of course, where the Vienna and Graz chapters bridged the physical distance between their cities in a lockdown through the power of the internet. The two chapters worked together on a couple of occasions in the months behind us and organized webinars on some quite interesting and very important topics, addressing the questions of sustainable travel or taking the battles for the climate to court.

In this article we want to highlight their big contribution to the oikos calendar with events aimed at the entire oikos Community, by virtually taking a seat with Katharina Klinger, Vice President and Head of Relations in oikos Vienna.

Vienna and Graz are the two largest cities of Austria, respectively, where oikos has been present at universities for a while. With just around 200 kilometers between the cities, the cooperation between the two chapters came naturally, but there are also practical reasons to collaborate with the closest neighbor. The chapters coming together allowed them to join their respective knowledge, experience and members interested and motivated to make a change in order to engage with a wider audience and introduce oikos to more students throughout Austria.

Hence the two chapters have a history of cooperation prior to the pandemic in working together on both online and in-person projects. In early 2020 the chapters jointly organized a webinar on sustainable finance, while also using the perks of the internet allowing them to organize on-site events in both Vienna and Graz with a speaker joining both through webcam. No doubt the success of these projects encouraged the two chapters to once the circumstances no longer allowed for in-person events.

The webinars organized by the two chapters had a sizeable audience going beyond their respective campuses. Reaching a large number of people is crucial in realizing the oikos Mission and Vision and is a guarantee of making a meaningful impact.

When it comes to both oikos Vienna and oikos Graz, having the other side working alongside local chapter members allowed them to expand their teams with motivated and friendly colleagues from another city, providing support, exchanging ideas and experiences while also forging new friendships. Furthermore, taking part in a cross-chapter project isn’t too different to working on one within the chapter. As Katharina points out there’s always something to learn from working with oikos Graz – be it organizing work, structuring projects or simply getting new perspectives and tools to potentially implement in your own chapter.

There’s immense positive impact for chapters from cooperation – working together and realizing an event definitely inspires and motivates chapter members following a successful project. Though there was a slight downside when it comes to working entirely online on a project and it’s the lack of an in-person contact. But the two chapters plan to overcome it with a get-together once the circumstances allow it.

Katharina is positive oikos Vienna’s cooperation with Graz will last and grow even stronger, while always remaining open to expand the cross-chapter collaboration with other chapters. She also stresses the positive side effects and benefits in the forms of experience, knowledge as well as social commitment.

Finally, we’d like to back Katharina’s words of encouragement to all chapters to give cross-chapter projects a try and take away many great things that come from it.

We’d like to thank Katharina for taking part in creating this article and her eagerness to share her chapter’s experience.

Author: Stefan Krasic
oikos International Communication Manager

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oikos International

posted June 12, 2020

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Student and PRME dialogue: The next Gen

oikos International President Clementine Robert will moderate the session ‘Student and PRME dialogue: The next Gen’ which is taking place online during the PRME Virtual Global Forum on June 18.
During the session we will look at the students’ perspective on what the education should look like and find out how Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) and students could work together to make it a reality.

Learn more: https://www.unprme.org/global-forum/index.php

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oikos International

posted June 9, 2020

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Curriculum Action Call

Join us for the Curriculum Action Call on Friday, June 26 from 4 – 5:30 pm CEST time. Just click on the Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83381467353


The Curriculum Action Calls is an ongoing project initiated by the oikos Curriculum Academy participants. All people interested in how should economics and management education that addresses urgent global challenges look like are most welcome to join. Every last Friday in a month, we will virtually meet. The Curriculum Action Calls provide space to share ideas, get feedback on our projects, and help each other.
This time we will plan together the curriculum Action Squad workshop we want to deliver during the oikos in Residence. Also, we are collecting curriculum action stories across oikos chapters. Do you have one? If yes, get back to us and share your story.

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oikos International

posted June 4, 2020

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