RAS 2025 Year Overview

Dear RAS community,

After a busy start to the year - organising events, facilitating communications, and planning for 2026 - our team took time to reflect on what our community achieved, learned, and contributed in 2025. The results are inspiring and we are happy to share some of them below.

In terms of community, we welcomed 30 new Fellows and 30 new PhD candidates, expanding the Rudolf Agricola School for Sustainable Development (RAS) into a vibrant community of over 385 researchers. Across faculties, disciplines, perspectives and methods, our Fellows and PhDs share a commitment to advancing sustainable development and generating meaningful, positive, and transformative societal impact. 

Central to our approach is interdisciplinarity - breaking down silos of each discipline and fostering collaboration across disciplines that is structural, efficient, and flexible. Since our inception, RAS has championed a hybrid governance model, blending top-down management with bottom-up initiatives from our research groups. This approach, fuelled by academic enthusiasm of both early-career and seasoned researchers, enables us to respond to societal research needs, influence policy agendas, and drive sustainability-oriented action in collaboration and connection with our societal partners.

In terms of funding support, RAS has been a facilitator at different levels of involvement, with some proposals already receiving favourable outcomes and others still under review. Some successful projects that have benefited from funding assistance are:

• The Circular Plastics (PlesTic Ready) project, where twenty University of Groningen scientists from seven faculties united to combine expertise in circular plastics, policy, logistics, social acceptance, innovation, and corporate culture. 

• The Noord-Nederland Verdient Circulair 2.0 project that aims at strengthening the northern Netherlands SMEs, breaking down barriers in the circular economy, and connecting science, government, and businesses in a fully-fledged triple-helix collaboration. 

• The CurveBend project that aims to bend the curve of biodiversity loss and promote a nature-positive society through collective action by taking a transdisciplinary approach. 

Moreover, during this year, two rounds of the RAS PhD Impact Grants took place, with 9 grants awarded. Through these grants, RAS aims to help early-career researchers to further advance meaningful societal change through their work.

In terms of education, RAS assisted some of its Fellows in the organisation of their summer and winter schools on various themes within sustainable development, including sustainable landscapes, women-led change, polarisation, illegal trade, and financial inclusion. In addition, four interdisciplinary minor programmes were offered linked to RAS fellows: 

• Future Planet Innovation

• Arctic and Antarctic Studies

• Development Studies

• Global Studies and Decolonial Critiques. 

This year, RAS also contributed to lifelong development through the HOVO course (Higher Education for Seniors), "Livable Netherlands in a Sustainable World", by, among other things, creating intergenerational exchange opportunities through workshops.

In terms of events, we organised more than 40 high-impact events in 2025, both at our very own House of Connections and beyond. Some of our events were meant to create discussion, debate and reflection opportunities at different scales. At a larger scale, we organised our annual RAS symposium, which, in this edition, focused on discussing the role of the university in the 21st century and how we can bring about transformative change together by collectively reinventing the world together as researchers, educators and impact-makers. While at a smaller scale, the academic leads of some of our research themes met to, for example, discuss why multi-, inter- and trans-disciplinary approaches are important and what role each research theme plays in answering this question. 

Other events were meant to create broad connections, multi-, inter-, and trans- disciplinary collaborations, and develop impact-chains across different scales and between multiple societal stakeholders. Some examples are:

• The co-organisation of the New Year’s Circularity event together with Circular Groningen Drenthe, already in its third consecutive edition in 2026.

• The hosting of the international event "Speeding up the SDGs and shaping a more ambitious post-2030 agenda" for a second time. This event paved the way for a larger-scale follow-up event in 2027 in which we are already working on jointly with other institutions.

• The organization of the ‘Noordelijke Bestuursconferentie’ jointly with provinces and municipalities, where we brought together researchers and policy-makers to collaborate and address current local and regional issues. The next edition will take place on the 23th of October 2026 at the Provinciehuis Groningen where once again participants will focus on strengthening the resilience of the local democracy.

In terms of public engagement, some examples are the presence of RAS’s Fellows at the European Researchers' Night and at Zpannend Zernike. Here, RAS presented an interactive SDG booth, where researchers and students could discuss concrete sustainability-related issues with visitors, leading to awareness raising and knowledge sharing. Moreover, in collaboration with CurioUs, we organised a citizen science initiative focusing on plastics present in clothing. Through this project, students and researchers spoke with more than 200 residents while actively providing samples for research.

In terms of communication, RAS has reached a total of 680 newsletter readers over the 10 editions of our monthly newsletter. Furthermore, our LinkedIn community now has more than 1,670 followers. And our website has seen an update, especially the Fellows’ page. Moreover, through the process of trying new channels and formats, we launched a new podcast series, called the “Wijze Raad", where experts form a council of the wise that provides clarity and insight on major societal issues.

These were examples of our impact chains that we achieved in 2025 together as a community. We are working hard for a 2026 defined by kindness, peace, meaningful connection, and shared success, while also aiming to amplify our societal impact and to foster multi-, inter- and transdisciplinary research connections and collaborations. All under the collective commitment to achieving a more sustainable and resilient future for everyone. 

Yours, 

The RAS team