hUGe2: An Interdisciplinary Research Program for Sustainability

Abstract

The continuous adoption and evolution of technology in all aspects and areas of our lives and our environment entails new and complex challenges and asks for interdisciplinary perspective to avoid biases that affect sustainable development. In today’s digital, automated, and globally connected society, digitization and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are among the fields that are taking the most relevance attention and societal impacts. The new technological development they imply and their use by an increasing part of the world population demonstrate that they must be driven by and for all people in society (across gender, culture, nationality, and other kinds of discrimination), protecting and achieving a positive impact on the environment, as well as a sustainable economy for all. Although the challenge is evident, progress has been invariably slow and addressed from isolated perspectives. The hUGe2 research program aims to address sustainability in and by technology (focusing on digitization and AI), analyzing from an interdisciplinary perspective the casuistry and existing discrimination (mainly due to gender imbalance, geographical inequalities, and lack of citizens’ engagement), and proposing new ways to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) tackling the intersectional challenges. To do this, it will be centered around four PhD students and their supervisors, which will investigate common case studies and data sets from different scientific perspectives.