Sander Van Der Leeuw at the INSITE Workshop
Sander Van Der Leeuw at the INSITE Workshop
Transcript
My name is Sander Van Der Leeuw. I am an archeologist, anthropologist and to some extent a medieval historian. I have over the last 20 years been involved in transdisciplinary projects. Initially here in Europe in a big project on the relationship between agricultural degradation, land degradation and urbanization, and now involved in projects on innovation and sustainability. Partly in the United States, partly here at the European Center for Living Technology here in Venice where I also have an unpaid appointment which allows me to be involved in these European projects.
The interest for me of all this work is two-fold. It is on the one hand an academic interest in trying to better understand the factors that are involved in sustainability from the social science perspective rather than from the environmentalist perspective or the environmental science perspective. On the other hand, I’ve been a broker now for 20 years between the disciplines, between academic cultures. I have found that a very good role for myself in which I could do things that not everybody else could do. That is essentially a question of translation. It’s a translation between, say, physics and rural sociology, between Hispanic or Spanish cultural tradition and an Anglo cultural tradition, those kinds of things.
What I see for myself in this INSITE project is two-fold. It’s on the one hand, develop those insights. On the second aspect, to actually help people create those bridges between those disciplines, between those cultures. Then as a third, to actually work with solutions. What I’m doing in our department in Arizona is actually to create a department that is not focused on essentially academic endeavors, but is focused on using academia to help create solutions in practical life. That is what I enjoy most doing.
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The above transcript provided by Landmark Associates.