Universities and territories for a just transition: transformative epistemologies for ecological responsibility

Abstract

The encounter between contemporary universities and sustainability generates a field of tensions characterized by transformative potentialities alongside risks of neoliberal co-optation. This article examines the evolution from the university’s Third Mission towards paradigms of University Social Responsibility, revealing, however, the persistent gap between participatory rhetoric and genuinely transformative practices. The case of the Italian Network of Universities for Sustainable Development exemplifies the ambivalences permeating the academic system, which oscillates between impulses for social innovation and tendencies toward greenwashing.

The analysis particularly highlights the necessity of promoting and embedding, within universities’ missions, both transformative epistemologies grounded in principles of complexity and critical pedagogies capable of overcoming disciplinary fragmentation and fostering authentic forms of co-production of knowledge with local territories. In both cases, these conditions are prerequisites for the university’s reclamation of its role as a politically conscious and civically engaged actor in the construction of alternative models of territorial, human, and educational development.