SASUF Sustainability Forum 2024

PROFILHOTELS HOTEL GARDEN: Baltzarsgatan 20, 211 36 Malmö

COMFORT HOTEL MALMÖ: Carlsgatan 10 C, 211 20 Malmö

QUALITY HOTEL THE MILL: Amiralsgatan 19, 211 55 Malmö

MOMENT HOTELS MALMÖ: Norra Vallgatan 54, 211 22 Malmö

SCANDIC S:T JÖRGEN: Stora Nygatan 35, 211 37 Malmö

STORY HOTEL STUDIO: Tyfongatan 1 , 211 19 Malmö

Google Maps Link

MICROSOFT TEAMS LINK: Join the meeting now

Meeting ID: 359 670 720 237

Passcode: jxHMxD

Pollution of water bodies by plastics is a growing global concern, impacting both South Africa and Sweden. Recently, pollution by microplastics (MPs) formed by the physicochemical breakdown of plastics has been flagged as a worldwide issue with long-lasting and hazardous effects to the environment, animals and humans. The natural degradation of MPs from the environment takes several years and by the time the MPs are removed, they would have already left a negative impact on the surroundings. Hence, there is an urgent need for determining the status of MPs pollution in water resources and developing eco-friendly strategies to remove them from ecosystems. The existing collaboration between Lund University, Uppsala University, Tshwane University of Technology, University of Pretoria and University of Vends aims to contribute towards building capacity in both South Africa and Sweden in remote sensing, bioremediation, environmental analytical chemistry methods for characterisation as well as modelling of pollutants. The workshop on characterisation and bioremediation of microplastics aims to bring together researchers, early career researchers, postdoctoral fellows and postgraduate students from both South Africa and Sweden to engage on current trends in elucidating the fate and transport of these contaminants of emerging concern using artificial intelligence and machine learning, characterisation using hyperspectral remote sensing and imaging as well as bioremediation technologies for the removal of these CECs in water resources. It is envisaged that a community of practice between South Africa and Sweden researchers can continuously work towards developing a spectral library and geospatial data to fill the large knowledge gaps about the geographic and temporal scales of microplastic distribution as well as propose strategies for the bioremediation of MPs in waters.
The workshop be in a hybrid format to allow wider participation in both South Africa and Sweden.
The workshop will be in the form of presentation from experts including a question and answer
and way forward. The workshop structure is structured as follows:
5 minutes: Welcome and overview of the workshop
45 minutes presentation on bioremediation of MPs (Swedish partners) Mikael Ekvall, LU: Nanoplastics in wetland models: Fate and effect Tommy Cedervall & Martin Lundqvist, LU: Facilitated breakdown of microplastics in nature Rajni Hatti Kaul, LU: Different means of bioremediation of microplastics
10 minutes Q&A
45 minutes presentation on remote sensing and characterisation of microplastics (South African partners) Prof. Joshua Edokpayi, UniVen: Occurrence, challenges and opportunities of microplastics in South Africa
Graham Bainbridge, Univ Pretoria: Multiscale remote sensing of microplastics and pollutants of emerging concern  
Dr. Khathutshelo Emmanuel Netshiongolwe, TUT: •Application of machine learning methods to improve identification of the microplastics in Hennops River Q&A  5 minutes closing and way forward
Keywords: Microplastics, characterisation, bioremediation, remote sensing

Google Maps Link

Introduction of the topic
Peri-urban areas in sub-Saharan cities are growing and changing due to incessant migration and urbanisation. The rapid expansion of small rural towns in South Africa in particular results in depletion of common property resources and natural ecosystems as individuals maximise their own gains. As the small rural towns experience increases in the number of households residing in the peri-urban villages, there is lack of access to natural ecosystem services due to rapid expansion of housing developments into the commons including mountains and wetlands. These commons are slowly depleting. This complexity is exacerbated by the need to provide space for new housing developments and survival of households amid challenges affecting their livability in the urban periphery. The purpose of this workshop is therefore to unravel and depict the sustainability impact of commons depletion on ecosystem services in peri-urban villages of small rural towns in South Africa.

Relevance of it to the Swedish and South African context
This research is key to the already established and existing network of researchers from Sweden and South Africa. These Swedish and South African research partners are co-supervising research projects. The Swedish experience therefore provides a case of best practices from the north which can be adopted in South Africa. Thus, the current workshop intends to draw insights from Sweden on how to understand the sustainability impact of commons depletion on ecosystems services in peri-urban villages of small rural towns of South Africa. The major contribution of this partnership is therefore to present a framework for climate action and SDGs as a sustainable response to commons depletion in the urban periphery.

The aim/purpose with the workshop
This workshop contributes to the debates of SDGs, urbanization and ecosystem services in a context of North-South collaboration. The impact of urbanization and land use changes on ecosystems services and to achieve the SDGs in peri-urban villages of small rural towns will be stressed in an endeavor to develop a framework for climate action as a sustainable response of fast-growing areas. The workshop intends to give students an opportunity to discuss and present their views on how the proposed framework on climate action can be useful to curb the depletion of commons and enhance ecosystems services. Finally, the research team looks forward to expanding the existing pool of researchers (both students and lecturers) who are interested to work on the project.
How you plan to develop future collaborations and activities beyond the forum
The research team intends to engage the Vhembe Local Municipality on how the proposed framework can be used to curb depletion of the commons and enhance ecosystems services in peri-urban villages of small rural towns in the district. We look forward to establishing an institutional Research Chair at the University of Venda which focuses on these oncepts. The research team will continue to co-supervise postgraduate students from the Swedish and South African universities participating in the project. We hope to sign Memorandum of Understanding with Swedish universities, and pave way for joint degree programmes and student exchange programmes.

Check zoom link: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/68980478561  (also in field video stream)

0900hrs
Welcome and opening of workshop Experiences from Sweden – Ecosystem services, SDGs and the commons (Overwiew)
Prof N Ekelund

0920
Unpacking the key concepts and focus
Prof T Gumbo - online

0930hrs
Impact of migration and urbanization on sustainable cities: A comparative analysis of Swedish and African cities
Prof M Thynell

0940hrs
Land use planning imperatives in South Africa
Prof V Nel - online

0950hrs
Climate action tools and procedures
Prof S Manik

1000hrs
Remote Sensing and GIS as critical skills for research
Dr P Schubert

1020hrs
The commons and local economic development in small towns
W Nthangeni online

1030hrs
Depleting wetland ecosystems in the periphery of small towns
P Banda online

1040hrs
Where do we go from here?: The future of the project and discourses. Discussion.
Dr E Ingwani

1050hrs
Closure
Prof N Ekelund

Linkages with South African research priority areas
All presentations from lecturers and PhD students relate to the concept of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Examples from the Limpopo Province in South Africa and Sweden will be presented. At the end of the workshop there will be a discussion on how to collaborate in future research projects between the universities involved. The plan is to allocate two hours on Friday 17th of May 2024 in Malmö and the Chair of the workshop is Professor Nils Ekelund.

Keywords: climate action, peri-urban, small rural towns, ecosystem services, sustainability

Google Maps Link

In 2015, the United Nations adopted seventeen global sustainable development goals (SDGs), and there is now a rapid expansion of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) across nations and universities. Quality ESD requires students to develop a range of key competences such as systems thinking, strategic agency, collaborative skills, critical and creative problem-solving, self-awareness, and deep understanding of different normative values. Coupled with these skills, there is also an emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches to address so-called wicked problems. However, in spite of previous efforts to strengthen students’ interdisciplinary learning, most ESD have ended up in multidisciplinary approaches only with no actual integration of different disciplinary perspectives (interdisciplinarity) – and the same phenomenon can be observed in many ‘interdisciplinary’ doctoral programmes across the globe, both within and beyond the field of sustainable development. Still interdisciplinarity per se is a quality criterion in the EU framework of innovative doctoral education, which has reached attention far beyond European universities.

A general challenge in all ESD is that multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research are defined in different ways in the literature, and that these concepts are often used in exchangeable ways in practice. In doctoral education, one also needs to consider that institutional organisations, curricula, and supervisors are seldom adequately prepared for promoting interdisciplinary research. As a result, doctoral students’ learning processes sometimes lead to the opposite outcomes, such as when they rather strengthen their mono-disciplinary positions than collaborate across disciplines. Thus, there is now a situation where interdisciplinary research is a global key word in higher education policies to address the SDGs – yet without a clear understanding of how this can be promoted in doctoral educational practice. Also, considering the increased internationalisation of doctoral education, this picture is further complicated by the fact that national needs and contextual meanings of attaining diverse SDGs vary by country.

Against this background, our overall project (funded by a SASUF seed grant) aims to develop a context-sensitive pedagogical framework for developing ESD key competences and interdisciplinary supervision in doctoral education in South Africa and Sweden. Based on participatory research methodology within the context of interdisciplinary doctoral education, interviews have been conducted with supervisors and doctoral students at two universities in South Africa and two in Sweden. Within each country, data was collected from: (1) interdisciplinary doctoral programmes with an explicit focus on sustainable development, and (2) interdisciplinary doctoral programmes lacking this profile. Based on thematic analysis of the interviews, we will offer a preliminary context-sensitive pedagogical framework for enhancing interdisciplinary doctoral research. So far, such frameworks have generally been missing – especially within the research field of sustainable development studies, where our workshop will be an original contribution.

We will present the findings from the project and invite workshop participants to discuss interdisciplinarity and sustainability in doctoral education, from both a doctoral student and a supervisor perspective. The following questions will guide the workshop:

How do supervisors and doctoral students conceptualise interdisciplinary doctoral research?
What challenges do supervisors and doctoral students experience with supervising/generating interdisciplinary doctoral work, and what support do they need in this process?
How are their interdisciplinary approaches shaped by potential connections to the SDGs in the doctoral students’ projects?
How do their interdisciplinary approaches vary by national and educational contexts?
There will be opportunities in the workshop to interact on ideas for future research collaborations.

A presentation onf our project with sasuf-seed money 2023 – 15 min
An interactive workshop where we introduce four to five key concepts in interdisciplinarity and sustainability followed by four to five group discussions – 90 min
Concluding with discussions on what similar projects and/or new research ideas the workshop participants have in order to see what possibilities for cooperation there are beyond the sasuf-week – 15 min

Keywords: Doctoral education, doctoral supervision interdisciplinarity, PhD student competence, sustainability key competencies

Google Maps Link

Introduction:
Learning Analytics (LA) assists in identifying rich data trails that enable access to insights
into the learning process. Such data includes: students attendance; student performance;
curriculum goals; class schedules; student admission data; educational data; demographic
data and data on student affectivity (e.g. motivation, emotional states). The use of the data
can enhance our understanding of how student learn, enhance student retention and so
on.

Relevance of the topic to the Swedish and South African context:
A study conducted in South Africa (SA)1 involving eight Higher Education Institutions
(HEIs), noted the need to develop LA models at South African HEIs. Such LA models
could establish ways that data can be disaggregated and analyzed in a useful way to
optimize understanding of the individual student and identify appropriate and timely
interventions. Similar interventions are also needed in a Swedish context where LA can aid
in our understanding of the students learning process. In addition, with the introduction of
Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT it is increasingly important that we
understand how different tools aid, or deter, student learning.
How you plan to develop future collaborations and activities beyond the Forum:
It is expected that this workshop will attract academics who are interested in the use of
data to improve student attainment and to identify students who are at risk. Academics
from both Sweden and South Africa who shall attend the workshop will be invited to be
part of the Community of Practice in this endeavor. Future continuous academic activities
will be planned and executed e.g. joint workshops, research, publications.

The aim/purpose with the workshop:
The aim of the workshop is to explore the use of various sources of data within LA to
support students learning and attainment at higher education institutions in Sweden and
South Africa in order to identify and share examples of good practice. The workshop will
also be an opportunity to set up a Community of Practice between South Africa & Swedish
partners/Universities. Training approaches for multidisciplinary teams regarding the
identification and use of various data sources will also be taken into consideration.

The workshop will be divided into 2 sessions.
Session 1 (first hour):
- A short presentation of 1) What data is in higher learning environments, 2) What
Learning analytics is in a higher learning environments.
- A presentation of examples of various models of Learning Analytics data that is
used by various higher education institutions.
Session 2 (second hour):
- Group discussion on 1) what data is currently being used at your institution? 2) how
can LA and education data improve your education? 3) what is needed for you to
take full advantage of all the data available? (groups of 5 mixed)
- Report back & summary.
- An open discission on the way forward.

Keywords: Learning analytics, big data, student retention, sustainable education

Google Maps Link

The aim of the project is to build a long term, persistent and robust South Africa-Sweden Research School for collaborative, multidisciplinary and comparative studies on different aspects of physical activity and capacity building, based on perspectives of inclusion and equality. It will have three thematic focuses: the phenomenon of Sport Schools, the School Subjects of Life Orientation and Sport and Health, and the work conditions of Blue Light personal - firefighters, paramedics and police officers.

The form of Research School involving PhD-students is tested and widely used in Sweden to address research topics that on the one hand are strategically important to the scientific community, and on the other hand are not being researched in a qualitative and/or quantitative enough manner at any Swedish university. PhD-students from different universities are thus organized in a national PhD-education that either is formally organized and administrated by one of the participating universities, or is autonomous in relation to all the participating universities, though administrated by one of them, the latter being the preferred form in this project. Malmö University will be the main applicant and, in case of funding, be the administrative university for the Research School.

The research school will include both PhD-students and Masters students. For the reason of reproduction of the research school it will also involve students at the Bachelor level. The PhD-students will belong to a PhD-education at one of the participating university departments. The Research School will not replace the departments PhD-education, instead it will offer an additional common focus on the three thematic areas/focus areas, several optional doctoral courses, optional co-supervisors or expert supervisors, and inclusive multidisciplinary seminar series with students and researchers in and over the thematic area borders. It will organize students that are either funded by the existing PhD-educations or by external funding. It will be based on a mix of virtual- and in-real-life communication, a mix that after the Covid experience has become a qualitatively new opportunity for international collaboration.

The set-up of the Research School and Capacity Building in Life Orientation is related to the ICM-funding that the department of Sport Science at Malmö University has received for 2023 and for 2023-2025. Building the Research School will both profit from the ICM-funding, as well as further develop the spirit of that funding.

The workshop will entail a brief presentation (30-45 min) on the concept of a research school and the implementation plan for the next three (3) the by the principal drivers of the research school. The remaining time will be free and open discussion between the workshop attendees about the various facets of the research school, such as global concept, memorandum of agreement, roles and responsibilities of the partnering institutions, PG education and communication, staff and student mobility, joint / double degree terms and conditions, research funding, etc.

Keywords: research school, joint / double degree, global student

Google Maps Link

Storytelling for sustainability
The purpose of the workshop is to explore new concepts for understanding sustainability and new methods teaching sustainability in the classroom using storytelling as an inspirations. The workshop addresses different challenges. While education is emphasized as important for enabling sustainability transitions, there is still a huge challenge concerning developing methods that can better overcome the gap between education and practice. Second, while the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) have mobilized attention for managing for sustainability, the balance between economy, society and environment is being questioned as a framework for management for sustainability. A need for an alternative strong sustainability approach that is more holistic, pervasive and embedded in nature is increasingly being voiced. We suggest that storytelling can help addressing these challenges. New research on storytelling emphasize how stories are always made from landscapes and spaces and moves with the rhythms of life, not just human lives. Second, storytelling implies grounding theories and models in people’s lived experiences as well as in collective storymaking. Working with stories entails compassion, care and curiosity as well it entails an awareness of interdependence as well as responsibility. Through storytelling, students can potentially learn how to combine community building and social justice with sustainability. These topics are highly relevant in both the South African and Swedish context. The problems and their political relevance are different. Still there is an important need to look at social justice and sustainability as interconnected. The question concerning how we combine human rights with rights of ecology is important in this respects. The workshop will be organized as a participatory storytelling workshop facilitated through short presentations of how sustainability and social justice can be combined through storytelling in three different educational contexts.

Management education for dealing with societal challenges at Malmö University (MaU).
Management education for sustainability at University of Johannesburg (UJ).
Education for sustainability and social justice centered at the research network at the University of Mpumalanga (UM).

This will be followed by exercises in collaborative storytelling. The workshop is part of emerging collaboration where researchers from two of the institutions (MaU and UJ) have been visiting each other for the purpose of creating long term collaboration. A Memorandum of Understanding is being signed. Between the Swedish main applicant and the research network at UM, there has been collaboration since 2010. The collaboration between the Swedish main applicant and the researchers from the two South African universities have been in relation to PhD assessment, research workshops and conferences. This collaboration is being strengthened and there are plans of strengthening and extending the collaboration in the areas of sustainability and social justice and with a focus on power, ethics, education and learning.

Description of the context of the workshops.
What are the different contexts for problems concerning sustainability and social justice
Three 5-10 minutes presentations.
Colloborative storytelling for sustainability and social justice. How can we create new concepts for combining sustainability issues with social justice. How do we perceive these problems in the different contexts.
How can education contribute to addressing these solutions. How can we use storytelling to mobilize awareness and responsibility?
How can we train care, compassion and curiosity through using stories.
How can we storytelling to anchor sustainability and social justice in practice.
What are the new concepts we can use.
Sharing stories for discussion and wrap-up.

Keywords: Storytelling, sustainability, social justice, concepts and methods for education.

Google Maps Link

Dialogue topic for discussion
Reflecting on the participants’ academic experiences, discern a comparative analysis into the extent to which the rapid growth of smart cities and digital LMSs in general, have either exacerbated or addressed concerns of digital oppression looking at inclusivity, equality, and accessibility.
The COVID-19 pandemic, as redundant as it may seem in the year 2024, brought forth and increased the pace at which the world had to adapt to technological evolution from the world of work to education. Looking closely at the world of teaching and learning, this need to adapt created immense anxieties with issues of accessibility and equality being very prominent. The accelerated use of digital learning management systems (LMS) was argued to have been entrenched in a dehumanized educational experience that increases corporate profitability over the needs of students (Farag et al.; 2022).  An often-debatable question is “whether the rapid adaptation of digital LMS is inclusive enough to not exacerbate anxieties in the teaching and learning domain looking at both access and inclusivity”.
According to Farag et al., digital learning undoubtedly increases global access to a universe of education but can also intensify some of the worst problems described in Freire’s “banking model” (Farag et al.; 2022).
Freire’s pedagogy of the digitally oppressed in summary, suggests the banking model of teaching and learning as the world-wide view that the teacher is the possessor of knowledge and students’ receptors to deposits of this knowledge – essentially qualifying this as oppressive and inhumane (Farag et al.; 2022).
Round Table Debate topic

Looking at both the inputs of the panel members and prior research, argue for or against the effectiveness of currently implemented digital LMSs in improving or impairing the experience of teaching and learning in both South Africa and Sweden, canvased as 1st and 3rd world countries. Pay attention to the accessibility, equality, and inclusivity in both geographic contexts, referring to the degree at which these technologies accommodate the marginalised in society at the expense of their profit gains or vice versa.
This discussion will be a collective discussion post dialogue.

Google Maps Link

Digitization for cultural heritage projects have mostly focused on collections in formal archives, museums and libraries. While this is an important part of cultural heritage work, this workshop explores the challenges of digitizing 20th century informal paper archives of Southern African literature and theatre that have not been maintained in formal archives. There is an enormous amount of cheaply printed and handwritten literary ephemera not maintained in libraries. Much of this material, which formed a major cultural substrate for the majority of Southern Africans during apartheid, was never formally published, thereby making the protection and digitization of these manuscripts even more urgent for cultural heritage work in Southern Africa.

A further problem in this field is the work of corporate digitization projects which place digitized Southern African materials behind paywalls. Often, these materials are gained via access to formal university and governmental paper archives, which raise questions that have to be addressed at the level of policy. It also means that even those ephemeral forms that are kept in formal archives are not accessible to local readers.

The workshop will begin with the presentation of two case studies. The first case looks at the very real material threat to Zimbabwean theatre paper archives, which have fallen into such disrepair that important materials have certainly already been lost. The second case study looks at high quality digitization of Black South African Magazines and the problems of the corporatization of these materials.

This workshop operates as a ‘think tank’ to articulate and discuss the challenges of cataloguing and digitizing informal cultural archives in Southern Africa.

The first hour will consist of two half-hour presentations of the case studies by the Swedish and South African PIs. The second hour will be a structured discussion of how best to articulate, address and resolve the challenges of digitization of cultural heritage work in Southern Africa. Topics for discussion will include:
Copyright and lack of infrastructure to find living authors or their families
Unattributed materials – method toolbox for finding unattributed materials, or finding out who was writing behind pseudonyms
Basic quality digitization: is it enough? Is it better than nothing?
Cataloguing ephemera
Working with family trusts and other stakeholders
Repositories for digitized materials
Working with National Archives and National repositories

Keywords: Cultural heritage, digitization, African Literature, African Theatre.

Google Maps Link

This workshop is on how creative writing, performance and place can work together to enhance understandings of space and placemaking. We will explore different artistic
forms of popular memory to improve citizen awareness, engagement and socio-spatial justice, specifically in cities. We take as our case study the Johannesburg Literary Site-
specific Theatre Project run in 2022/2023, initiated by Alex Halligey through the University of Johannesburg (UJ), in collaboration with Malmö University (MAU). The project solicited
short form writing from unpublished authors on everyday experiences of Johannesburg.

Out of the submissions, a poem by Zandile Dube and short stories by Lerato Mahlangu and Teneal Naidoo were used as catalysts for Jade Bowers (UJ) in collaboration with three
professional performers and fourteen UJ undergraduate students, to devise the theatrical work Breaths of Joburg, staged on a pavement in downtown Johannesburg. Høg Hansen,
Rundberg (MAU), Halligey, three MAU MA students and three Johannesburg-based post-graduate students made up a research team collaborating with the artistic writing and
performance process, to understand the knowledge development it was facilitating. The six postgraduate students from MAU and Johannesburg each designed their own research
questions and thematic focal areas which fed into the overarching research initiative. Rundberg set up a multi-camera, live video feed shown through Zoom to an online audience made up of students and members of the public in Johannesburg, Malmö and other global locations.

The pilot involved a temporary exhibition at the Windybrow art centre next to the performance space with project materials visualized and ‘collaged’ in zine/DIY style-
materials. We intend to run new site-specific activities in Malmö, Sweden and Makhanda, South Africa in 2024/2025 and have longer term ambitions of iterations in other European
and African cities.

In the workshop we discuss:

1. How creative writing about places might be returned to the sites of their inspiration through public performances, how these performances might be documented, used for education, and how a trans-medial process might develop knowledge and public discourse on city space and places (drawing from Halligey, 2018, and Høg Hansen et al, 2016).
2. The project’s trans-medial process’s drawing together of different city and online publics may shift perceptions and deepen understandings of; a) of the lived realities of a specific urban place, and; b) what we might consider as constituting global presents and futures.
3. A pedagogy of collaborative learning with students, concerned with a) in live situ/engagement in on-site observation, facilitation and media production, and; b) hybrid and distance learning events (live and recorded for reuse) where mediation and learning are taken beyond site experience and site specificity.

The workshop will showcase and discuss creative writing examples from the initial Joburg writing competition, rehearsal and performance recordings from April 2023, a
documentary film on the project, student thesis works, and other archival materials, such as visuals, zines, and collages from the exhibition. 

Workshop participants (in-person or online):

Alex Halligey, Project lead/coordinator, Rhodes University, South Africa
Anders Høg Hansen, Projecct lead/coordinator, Malmö University, Sweden 
Jade Bowers, Director of pilot production, University of Johannesburg, South Africa
Mikael Rundberg, interaction designer, hybrid teaching pedagogue, Malmö University, Sweden
MAU and UJ MA degree graduates, including Frank Ortiz, Kerstin Tschernigg and Patricia Calvo Garrido, Trevor Mantshoane who have produced MA theses on pilot in Johannseburg as well as Heather Braatvedt, PhD student,UJ, who will also lead a drawing exercise.
Leratu Mahlango, Teneal Naidoo or/and Zandile Dube, creative writing winners for pilot, Johannesburg, South Africa
Riaan Oppelt, guest respondent, South Africa, Oscar Hemer, guest, Malmö University, Sweden 

Keywords: Writing, Performance, Cityspace, Mediation, Education

Join online using this zoom link: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/65419939203?pwd=dkl5T09LKzJDZHJHcy9oV0FPVU1JZz09

Google Maps Link

Introduction and background of the topic:
Similar challenges have been identified in South Africa and Sweden signaling that children in care might not be heard or respected and not recognised for their capabilities to influence social change. Many significant decisions directly affecting their lives are made without their participation. This is a violation of their rights and in particular, the right to participate in matters that concern them. International treaties such as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC, 1989), as well as regional and local policy and legislation in Sweden and South Africa stipulate that children should participate in decisions that affect their well-being. These policy directives are important for social workers who are responsible for services to children in alternative care as they are obligated to adhere to these directives. However, there is uncertainty about how social workers understand the concept of child participation, how it is utilised in practice to ensure the best interest of the child principle, how do they adhere to policy and legislative directives and what challenges they may experience in implementation.

Relevance of the topic to the Swedish and South African Context:
Our study analysed and compared the policy and legislation of South Africa and Sweden to understand the directives for child participation and how it influence the daily work with children in alternative care and their opportunities for participation. Continuing our study, this workshop would present the preliminary findings of a World Cafe with social workers working with children in alternative care, held in South Africa in March 2024 and Sweden in May 2024. It would also extend our understanding of child participation with vulnerable children to influence social change through discussions with other interdisciplinary professionals and students within the SASUF network. This would benefit both the Swedish and the South African Context in that there is a moral and legal imperative that children should have opportunities for participation in matters concerning social change.

Aim/Purpose of the workshop:
The workshop's aim is twofold:

To discuss and further our understanding of interdisciplinary professionals' views on implementing child participation to influence social change.
To present our collaborative project to the SASUF audience.

How we plan to develop future collaborations and activities beyond the forum:
The research team, consisting of seven researchers from South Africa and Sweden, have worked together since 2019 and has already conducted workshops in South Africa and online for Swedish and South African social workers, and has published articles in peer-reviewed journals. In March 2024, the team will work together in Pretoria by conducting a World Café for South African social workers. A similar event will take place in Sweden in May 2024. The outcomes of the respective country World Cafés in South Africa and Sweden will contribute a solid base for the team’s future research into how children’s participation in alternative care can be more effectively implemented in both countries. It is essential to begin the process with social workers as they are the gatekeepers to access children. In the next project phase, we will continue by obtaining and including the voices of the children.

The World Café model was created by Juanita Brown and David Isaacs as a method to facilitate meaningful conversations in a more engaging and participatory approach. By using strategies such as an inviting environment, groups at small tables, rotations between tables, making notes at the table to be left for the next group, and harvesting of insights at the end, the World Café model supports creative thinking and problem-solving. The model is easy to use, and leave participants feeling empowered by the diversity of perspectives and the way the model enables them to collectively develop insights.

This workshop will be informed by preliminary findings from two earlier World Cafés with social workers and social work students in Sweden and South Africa respectively – on responses to questions such as: What is child participation and social change? What examples do you have of how children can participate in decision-making? 

In this workshop, we will use the preliminary findings of the two World Cafés with social workers to formulate questions to be discussed in this workshop’s interactive World Café with interdisciplinary academics and students, to help further triangulate the findings.

Keywords: Alternative care; Child Participation; Social work; World Café, Social change

Google Maps Link

Malnutrition in children is a major health problem in both South Africa and Sweden. In South
Africa malnutrition is associated with stunting early in life and with obesity later in life. In Sweden
the prevalent manifestation of malnutririon in children is obesity. The extent of the problem is
substantial with 27% of children below 4 years of age being stunted in South Africa and 15% of 4-
years old having overweight or obesity and essentially none with stunting in Sweden. Malnutrition
early in life in connected with complicteions including cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and certain forms of cancer later in life. It is therefore essential to better understand causes of
malnutrition to be able to effectively intervene.
Malnutrition has been connected with multiple conditions and manifestations. Considerable work
and resources have been invested in understandning these causes and manifestations of
malnutrition in the two settings, exemplified by South Africa ans Sweden. Also, different attempts
to intervene have been made engaging different sociwetal settings and stakeholders. Although
some progress has been made, no solution to the problem has sofar been identified. On the
contray, rates of stunting and overweight inscrease in the two countries, respectively.

In the recently approved project ”Seed to end malnutrition in South Africa and Sweden” (SASUF-
NRF: 2023-2024), we describe three steps to tackle malnutrition:

1. Writing 2 metanalysis articles on effects of previous interventions targeting malnutrition in
South Africa and in Sweden.
2. Workshops with local public health representatives to map unpublished information on
already implemented interventions, both in South Africa and in Sweden.
3. Conducting intervention studies with ECHO-S zones, in the light of more concrete evidence.
In May 2024 the meta-analysis (step 1) will be ready with an updated analysis of previous
interventions to improve malnutrition in South Africa and Sweden. We therefore propose to
organize a workshop, where we will present the results of the study, during the SASUF Innovation
Week.

Dispostion of the workshop
Part 1 (20 min + 10 min break): Summary of the results of the meta-analysis. The article/
manuscript of the meta-analysis will be distributed to participants of the workshop ahead of time.
Part 2 (50 min + 10 min break): Discussion of the results of the meta-analysis in smaller groups
based on specifically formulated questions derived from the meta-analysis and questions
addressing and guiding steps 2 and 3 of the proposal “Seed to end malnutrition in South Africa and
Sweden”.
Part 3 (30 min): Summary of the results of the discussion to guide and formulate steps 2 and 3 of
the proposal “Seed to end malnutrition in South Africa and Sweden”.
Specific input to step 3 will also be available from the results from the proposed satellite event
during the Innovation Week “ECHO zone Sweden".

Keywords: Malnutrition, stunting, obesity, interventions

Google Maps Link

Smart City models are being promoted as a cure to solve the challenges of big metro cities
globally. African Metro Cities are suffering from a complex number of challenges which this
satellite event tries to address with the help of smart city models, associated emerging digital
technologies and best practices from existing smart city deployments. Smart city models with
their digital twins’ platforms are tools that can be used to provide innovative solutions to the
challenges of resource utilization, environment and air pollution monitoring, intelligent
transportation systems, remote health monitoring, water and waste management and
electricity power utilization in big African Metro cities. For example the recent underground
gas explotion in the City of Johannesburg, could have been avoided by smart city gas
sensors, connected to alarm systems using IoT networks. A “Smart City” by definition is a
city that can sense, measure and record its environment, it also includes networked
interconnection between the sectors of its economy for data sharing and co-optimization of
resource utilization. Furthermore a smart city has the capacity for high performance
computing for analysis of data gathered by Internet of Things (IoT) smart sensors and
visualizing the data in a digital twin platform, predict real-time and offline events and
perform foresight analysis for future decision making. The workshop will also address the Digital Twin concept as a virtual representation of physical systems and processes of metro
city environments and develop proof of concept applications for remedial innovations on a
common platform. This is expected to help data visualization and study of sustainability and
impact of smart city technology deployments, including urban dwellers safety and privacy in
a controlled setup. Examples of smart city models implemented in different cities and their
impact will also be presented as best practices to learn from.
Swedish Context: Next steps, on how to extend the digital transformation based on IoT Smart
sensors for developing relevant and sustainable applications. The recently introduced IoT Masters
program at Malmö University will be discussed with industry players from Mobile Heights (MH), an
Association of industry players focused on sustainable digitalization and development of a
sustainable ecosystem of smart city services and industry creation.

1- Presentation of Position paper on Smart Cities for Metro Cities of Africa, ...30 Min
2- On Swedish Industry view on sustainable digitalization and Smart City Services,....30 Minutes
3- Panel Discussion With Invited Experts from Industry & Academia.........45 Minutes
https://mobileheights.org/
4- Summary and Conclusion........ 15 Minutes.

Keywords: Smart Cities, Sustainable Digitalization, Digital Twins, Innovation, IoT

Google Maps Link

Digital technology, such as AI and ChatGPT, are often approached as drivers of change, leading us into the future. This change is often feeling overwhelming as ordinary people, users of these digital tools and systems, are trying to keep up with all the digital innovations that keep popping up. But what if we turn this around and start with the role of people, their everyday lives, routines, and socio-cultural contexts when trying to understand both contemporary digital technology development as well as when imagining and foresighting tomorrow's digital tech? This workshop will focus on users of digital technologies, tools and systems, their everyday lives and socio-cultural embeddedness. By bringing in ordinary users of digital technologies in both Sweden and South Africa (both literally and metaphorically) in this workshop, inviting participants to imagine and foresight the digital technologies of tomorrow, we introduce a method of how tech development may become more just, transparent and not the least sustainable, in the future.

The theoretical foundations of this workshop stem from critical data studies, the sociology of imaginations and storytelling. Methodologically, the workshop draws models of collaborative foresighting and ethnographic futures.

Assuming that every workshop participant is a user of digital technology, the workshop will be centred around their stories of their own situated uses of digital technologies. After a short introduction to the workshop procedures, its theoretical and methodological foundations, participants will be divided into smaller groups. We aim for around five participants in each group and we will ensure group diversity in terms of perceived age, gender and of course that every group is composed of both Sweden and South Africa based participants. People/ users seldom do what they are told to or use digital tools and systems exactly as intended. Digital technologies fail to deliver on users’ expectations. Digital tools and systems break and need repairing. This is not done in a vacuum. Digital technologies are adopted into and adapted to fit users' everyday lives, societies and cultures. Undoubtedly, digital technologies transform users’ everyday lives, societies and cultures. But also vice versa: the socio-cultural context(s) that users are situated and embedded in, will influence how digital tools and systems are used and developed. The workshop is organized with this in mind.

The first part of the groupwork will entail participants sharing stories of innovative, surprising and unintended uses of digital technologies, for example when handling tools and systems that fail or do not live up to their promises or users’ expectations. Are their similarities and/or differences in these stories regarding for example gender, age and geographic location? And why might this be so? In the second part of the groupwork, participants are invited to depart from these stories when imagining a better digital tech future, to play around with and think about future scenarios. The grand finale of the groupwork will entail the formulation of a number of foresights. The workshop is concluded after each group has presented their foresights to the other participants.

PLENARY
Welcome 10 min
Principles and rationale of the workshop 10 min
Theoretical and methodological foundations 10 min
Division into groups 5 min

GROUPWORK
Sharing of stories from each participant 25 min
Scouting and understanding similarities and differences in the stories told 20 min
Foresight formulation: What can these stories, their similarities and differences, tell us about the future use of digital tech? 20 min

PLENARY
Presentation of foresights 10 min
Discussion of foresights presentet 10 min

Keywords: Digital Technologies, Change, Foresight, People

https://maps.app.goo.gl/kBeb9WXrhSgwnFR39

Coffee is served at Orkanen ground floor.