UKRN’s Sustainability Academy 2025: Expressions of interest now open!
Expressions of interest are now open for colleagues in governmental and regulatory organisations who are responsible for, or involved in, work on regulatory sustainability.
This Academy cohort take place on 22-23 October 2025 as a two-day residential in Cambridge.
What is the Sustainability Academy?
The Sustainability Academy has been developed by the UKRN in partnership with Anglia Ruskin University’s leading Global Sustainability Institute (GSI) to provide targeted and bespoke training on regulatory sustainability to regulators, policymakers, strategists and climate leaders.
The Academy is delivered by Prof. Aled Jones, Director of ARU’s GSI, and Dr Zareen Barucha, Research Fellow at the GSI, with contributions from leading practitioners and organisations on regulatory sustainability.
The course provides a space for colleagues from different regulators to learn, develop and share their practice and understanding of the interconnections between global sustainability challenges, reflect critically on emerging frameworks to guide sustainability transitions, and think about their own role as agents of positive change within the regulatory environment, and on the opportunities and barriers to achieving this change.
Critically, the Sustainability Academy tries to address a wide range of practical and common challenges that colleagues working in regulatory bodies face when working on climate and environmental issues, with an emphasis on developing:
- An up-to-date understanding of the most urgent, planetary-level sustainability challenges, their interconnections, and the contours of what changes are needed for sustainability transitions
- An understanding of the core principles of frameworks for whole systems change
- An understanding of effective decision-making for sustainability under conditions of uncertainty, complexity and evolving risks
- Insights from reflective sessions on their personal positionality as agents of change, the unique possibilities for change within their own sectors and the barriers which may need to be navigated.
How much does it cost?
The Sustainability Academy is a residential course that takes place in Cambridge over two full days. Costs include all meals, refreshments and accommodation and are as follows.
UKRN members: £1080 per person (including VAT).
Non-UKRN members: £1,730 per person (including VAT)
If booked before 30th June 2025, you will receive an early bird discount of 10%.
What do I get from attending?
The Sustainability Academy takes participants through a full two-day course, hosted in person at Madingley Hall in Cambridge.
The course has been designed specifically with regulators’ needs in mind and benefits practitioners that have a working knowledge of climate change and sustainability, such as policymakers, strategists and climate leaders, as well as those who work with the detail of the subject matter, for example analysts and technical specialists.
On day one, participants are encouraged to explore how their organisations’ contributions to sustainability matches to the scale and urgency of the challenge, whether regulators’ remits are adequately positioned and whether it is ever possible to enable sustainable growth. The discussion is enriched with a guest speaker, on the possibilities of systems-wide decision-making under conditions of uncertainty, complexity and risk, and the broad changes to the appetite for sustainability regulation. A facilitated workshop, exploring collective responsibility and the management of finite, common-property resources, closes the session.
Day two opens with a guest speaker bringing to the table case studies of regulation as an active enabler of change, focusing on success stories and on what could have been done differently. A facilitated workshop encourages participants to redefine and reframe the problem, challenge assumptions, plan and place make using regulators to align goals and explore creative ideas and innovation within new frameworks.
Most importantly, the Academy isn’t just about turning up to each session for a discussion. Instead, from the outset, Academy participants can use the experience to help build and improve their own organisation’s thinking and outlook on regulatory sustainability.
Who is the Global Sustainability Institute?
The Global Sustainability Institute (GSI) is a high-profile research institute at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU), and has grown rapidly since its formation in early 2011. It is staffed with a dynamic group of researchers involved in an extremely wide variety of research projects, collaborating with numerous external partners as well as other universities around the world.
The GSI is particularly interested in applying methodologies and approaches from a wide range of different disciplines to better understand how transitions in society work. It is very interested in how academic disciplines are used in policy making and where these academic boundaries can sometimes lead to non-optimal advice.
The Institute’s work is around the following key themes: complex social-ecological systems; everyday experiences; policy, governance and institutions; education for sustainability; participation and community engagement; reflexivity and research practices.
The Institute has built a global reputation for its research, with major publications in the communication of climate science, policy, and climate finance. It has partnerships with businesses, not-for-profit organisations, the UK Government, EU Commission and United Nations as well as UK Research Council-funded projects.
How can I find out more information? How can I book?
Please get in touch with UKRN: UKRN@caa.co.uk
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