Fit4Future Summer School
The Fit4Future Summer School series provide a dynamic learning environment where students engage with challenges of tomorrow. Every year the thematic focus shifts towards current transition dynamics and transformation processes. The Summer School provides a mix of online lectures and offline exercises, with a full-week course during September every year.
Topics are:
- Just Transitions to sustainable and clean energy
- Circular Economy and Society
- Digitalisation and Sustainability
- Globalisation and Global Studies
- De- and Prostgrowth
Throughout the programme, participants will engage with the various aspects of the chosen topic, explore the role of different transformation paradigms and assess the transformative power of different pathways towards sustainable future in an interdisciplinary setting. Renowned international experts will provide participants with a comprehensive understanding of the latest developments through lectures, workshops and field trips, creating a dynamic learning environment that encourages critical thinking and collaborative problem-solving.
Fit4Future 2026 "The Circular Urban Turn – Towards Zero-Waste Cities and Regions” Special Edition: Fit4Future goes ERASMUS+ Blended Intensive Programme
ERASMUS+ Blended Intensive Programme
Fit4Future Summer School 2026 "The Circular Urban Turn – Towards Zero-Waste Cities and Regions”
A collaboration between BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg (Germany), Université Polytéchnique Hauts-de-France (France), University of Vaasa (Finland), Karlstad University (Sweden)
Background and objectives:
Cities are metabolic engines of contemporary societies. They concentrate material flows, energy consumption, waste production, social inequalities, and innovation capacity in unprecedented density. account for 75 per cent of the world’s consumption of resources and for 60 to 80 per cent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (UNEP, 2019).). Yet the extraction of materials, agricultural production, energy generation, and waste disposal largely occur outside city boundaries. Thus, cities are embedded in regional production systems, global value chains, ecological hinterlands, and socio-material infrastructures. Any attempts for urban transformation therefore cannot stop at municipal borders. Despite their resource-intensive metabolism, cities and urban areas are often described as laboratories for transformative change (WBGU 2012). But what would it take to redesign urban systems (like housing, mobility, food, infrastructures, governance) towards more sustainable concepts like circularity, zero-waste, sufficiency, and commons?
The summer school enables participants to understand, critically assess, and design circular transformation processes across urban and regional scales, with a strong focus on bottom-up social innovation. Participants develop a systemic perspective on cities and regions as socio-ecological and socio-metabolic systems. They learn to analyse material and energy flows, identify structural lock-ins, and examine how infrastructures depend on regional and ecological contexts.
A key objective is to distinguish technocratic circular economy strategies from broader societal transformation approaches. The program explores how zero-waste policies, sufficiency practices, commons-based initiatives, and regenerative models intersect with climate mitigation, biodiversity protection, and social justice. Particular attention is given to grassroots initiatives—such as informal donation systems, repair networks, free shops, community-supported agriculture, and cooperative infrastructures—as sites of experimentation. Participants assess their transformative potential, internal tensions, and the challenges of institutionalisation and scaling.
To strengthen climate literacy and systems thinking, the summer school integrates a facilitated workshop by Climate Fresk. This participatory training deepens participants’ understanding of the causal mechanisms of climate change and connects circular urban and regional strategies to global climate dynamics.
About the BIP:
Blended Intensive Porgramme (BIP) between BTU-UVA-KAU-UPHF brings together students at different levels (bachelor, master, PhD) as well to engage in discussions and pathways for transformative action to face complex change in their regional contexts.Problem-based learning (PBL), hybrid (online and in-person) learning and flipped classroom approach.
Dates:
Online: 2-hours-session May, June, July, August 2026
In-person: 7-11 September 2026 at BTU Cottbus
More information about application and programm will follow soon!