PASCAL AUSTRALASIA at RMIT
RMIT University (previously the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) is one of Australia’s original and leading educational institutions, producing graduates who are employed readily in a wide range of industries. As an innovative, global university of design and technology, with its heart in the city of Melbourne, RMIT has an international reputation for excellence in work-relevant education and outstanding applied research, and engagement with the needs of industry and community.
As a dual-sector university, RMIT offers both vocational and higher education programs across a diverse range of disciplines including engineering, health, business, architecture and design, international studies and community services programs, which aim to prepare students to better understand and contribute to addressing the major challenges of our times.
RMIT has adapted the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as its sustainability framework and since 2017 has been embedding the SDGs into its strategies, processes policies and practices including curriculum, research, governance and operations. In 2023, RMIT has been ranked 7th in the world in the Times Higher Education (THE) University SDGs Impact Ranking.
RMIT has been involved with PASCAL from the outset. It was a co-sponsor of the OECD conference on learning regions from which PASCAL was founded, and has relished PASCAL’s efforts to focus on the interests and needs of regional authorities.
The interdisciplinary nature of PASCAL has resulted in links across multiple parts of the University, with most of the current members actively involved with the EU Centre of Excellence Research Network, which is situated within the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies (GUSS).
The inter-sectoral nature of PASCAL has organically developed into an extensive network of practitioners and researchers who are themselves situated within local government and civil society networks that regularly organise events linked to themes that are of interest to PASCAL. RMIT has conducted activities together with the cities of Melton and Wyndham, both active and awarded members of the UNESCO Global Network of Learning Cities. RMIT continues to co-organise events and advocates for Lifelong Learning together with civil society networks such as Adult Learning Australia (ALA), the Australian Learning Communities Network (ALCN), Australian Coalition for Education and Development (ACED) and the Women in Adult and Vocational Education (WAVE).
Examples of PASCAL at RMIT Projects
The UN SDGS - the EU’s Role in the Implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals in the Asia Pacific.
In 2018, the EU Centre of Excellence at RMIT was awarded a Jean Monnet Network grant on the EU’s Role in the Implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals in the Asia Pacific. It is supported by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.
The Network helped to establish partnerships between researchers, policy think tanks and Non-Government Organisations who shared a primary interest in examining the effective contribution of the EU to the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the Asia Pacific.
By strengthening collaboration amongst researchers and policy makers, the Network promoted a more effective evidence-base for EU institutions to engage with nations in the Asia- Pacific region to implement the SDGs. This was achieved through a series of workshops on each of the SDGs that helped to connect previously isolated research projects across the university and across Victoria. In addition, the Network promoted a critical approach to working with the SDGs to postgraduate students and Early Career Researchers (ECR) across RMIT. A set of policy briefs on each of the SDGs, and a monograph on engaging with the SDGs through Relating, Learning and Measuring a drafted and presented.
For more information follow this link.
Social and Scientific Innovation to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals
In 2021, a second Jean Monnet Research network on Social and Scientific Innovation to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SSISDG) Network was established through the assistance the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.
The Social and Scientific Innovation to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SSISDG) Network has been examining the role of the EU’s Smart Specialisation in linking scientific and social innovation, and how this can help deliver global action to address societal challenges. Experience over the past five years in implementing S3 in EU regions has demonstrated that science and technology innovation (STI) can address societal challenges in regions. Yet the EU has also experienced the limitations of STI and recognised the importance of socio-ecological innovation. This has also become apparent in global efforts to meet societal challenges.
The Network argues that as well as focusing on scientific approaches, greater attention should be paid to social innovation. This brings a more holistic perspective on understanding mission challenges and mobilises more diverse, inclusive voices and expertise, to progress these efforts in new directions.
The SSISDG Network will address this work through a research program considering the links between global action and regional development, and STI and socio-ecological innovation.
For more information follow this link.
Regional Policy and Smart Specialisation
During the past decade, the circumstances of ‘regional’ Australia have become much more explicit in Australian public policy. While issues of drought or flood have often drawn attention to the exigencies of farmers and or rural economies, it has been recognition of widespread structural differences, which has prompted the recent attention. Previously, language such as the ‘patchwork economy’ was used to describe the different patterns of activity in mining regions, vis a vis the much slower growth and even decline in non-metropolitan regions in the south-east of Australia. However, more recently, the pattern of continuing disasters and the closure of coal-fired electricity generation, and of logging of native forests, have triggered a different level of concern and priority. Yet policy responses have been typically ad hoc and fragmented, offering limited support to regional communities grappling with the economic, social and environmental implications of climate and global challenges.
By way of contrast, the EU has developed its Regional Policy as a comprehensive program over the past 40 years. Increasingly, its approach has come to emphasise the importance of bringing all EU regions in the Single Market, and has encouraged the development of regional innovation systems. The EU Centre of Excellence is a global leader in comparative regional policy research. The Centre has undertaken research on EU Regional Policy and its implications for Australia and Asian nations since 2010. It has a strong network developed with researchers in Australia, Europe and Asia, and with EU and Australian policy makers.
The EU Centre’s Regional Policy and Smart Specialisation research program asks what Australia and other countries in the Asia Pacific region can learn from the European experience, particularly the ‘Smart Specialisation Strategy’ (S3) methodology pioneered in the EU. It promotes a place-based approach to regional policy and development, and links directly to the Centre’s other research programs on, for example, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) —seeking to understand how a place-based approach pioneered in the EU might enhance possibilities for reaching SDG targets worldwide. Within this context, the circular economy has gained increasing prominence as a tool that presents solutions to some of the world’s most pressing cross-cutting sustainable development challenges.
After 5 years of experience with the application of Smart Specialisation in the context of sustainability transitions in Victoria, the Centre has acquired significant expertise in the adaptation of these processes in an Australian context. The learning is now being shared through its Partnerships in Regional Innovation Community of Practice.
For more information follow this link
Rural/Urban linkages
Much of the project work involves case studies with regions, cities, communities and villages across Australia, New Zealand, Asia and the Pacific. A key theme in the case study analysis is the linkages between places and their broader national and global context, not least the linkages between urban centres and rural peripheries. This approach has facilitated understanding of how the SDGs can have different implications in diverse places.
PASCAL People at RMIT
The PASCAL node at RMIT is currently convened by A/P Jose Roberto ‘Robbie’ Guevara, who is also the President of the International Council for Adult Education (ICAE). He facilitates a team which includes Professor Bruce Wilson, Director of the EU Centre of Excellence.
Dr. Maren Klein, Research Fellow at the EU Centre of Excellence. Dr. Mary Johnson, Research Fellow, who leads the ACIAR funded Livelihood Improvement through Facilitated Extension (LIFE) in the Philippines and Fiji and Dr. Leone Wheeler, Research Associate and the Honorary CEO of the Australian Learning Communities Network (ALCN) who is on the PASCAL Board and actively coordinates the PASCAL Learning Cities Network in Australia.
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