LMU Sustainability Week
The Munich Center for Sustainability (MZN) is organising a Sustainability Week under the auspices of the Sustainability Committee at LMU from 3 to 7 November 2025.

The Munich Center for Sustainability (MZN) is organising a Sustainability Week under the auspices of the Sustainability Committee at LMU from 3 to 7 November 2025.
The Sustainability Week program is updated regularly.
From November 3 to 7, 2025, the MZN will be hosting a Sustainability Week at LMU. You can look forward to...
In view of the accelerating ecological and social crisis dynamics, the global community is facing challenges on an unprecedented scale: anthropogenic climate change, the loss of biodiversity, the increasing scarcity of resources, the destabilisation of political orders and growing social inequalities dramatically illustrate the need for far-reaching change. These developments not only affect individual sectors, but also undermine the ecological, economic and social foundations of our coexistence. In this context, universities have a prominent role to play - as places of knowledge production, critical reflection and social responsibility.
By organising LMU Sustainability Week for the first time, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München is sending out a visible signal that sustainability is firmly anchored as a guiding principle of university development. The event week is organised by the Munich Centre for Sustainability (MZN) under the auspices of the LMU Sustainability Committee. It aims to institutionally strengthen the importance of sustainable development for research, teaching and university practice and to initiate a cross-faculty debate on key future issues. Sustainability is not understood as a sectoral challenge, but as an integrative, normative and transformative concept that transcends disciplinary boundaries and requires new forms of academic co-operation.
LMU Sustainability Week focuses on sensitising all members of the university to the urgency of a far-reaching social transformation. It aims to contribute to raising awareness of the structural interdependence of ecological, social and economic processes and to further develop the prerequisites for scientifically sound, interdisciplinary and practical sustainability action at LMU. This also involves the question of how universities can fulfil their institutional responsibility in the context of global sustainability goals and at the same time become laboratories of social transformation.
A central concern of the week is to make sustainability more visible as an integral part of university teaching. Innovative didactic concepts, transdisciplinary learning spaces, participatory formats and research-based learning can act as catalysts for transformation if they are consistently focussed on future issues and thought of in an intergenerational way. The training of future decision-makers in particular harbours considerable creative potential - both with regard to the acquisition of scientific knowledge and the development of transformative action skills.
In this context, the LMU Sustainability Week also focuses on the work of the Munich Centre for Sustainability (MZN). The MZN acts as an interfaculty platform for research, teaching and third mission activities in the field of sustainability. It promotes scientific exchange across disciplinary boundaries and contributes to the structural anchoring of sustainability-related topics at LMU. Systemic, transformative and critical-reflective perspectives are combined in order to make scientifically sound contributions to solving complex sustainability problems.
Current developments in higher education policy are opening up new opportunities for an ambitious commitment to sustainability. The strategic anchoring of sustainability as a cross-cutting issue within the LMU Excellence Strategy and the legal framework of the Bavarian Higher Education Innovation Act provide substantial starting points for institutional development. Against this background, previously unutilised potential can be tapped in order to structurally anchor sustainability in research, teaching, campus management, administration and university culture and to strengthen LMU's visibility and responsibility in a national and international context.
© MZN
Never before has the need—and opportunity—to actively contribute to shaping a sustainable future been as pronounced as it is today. LMU Sustainability Week sees itself as a catalyst and forum for exploring this potential. It invites all members of the university—University management and administration, researchers, teachers, students, and staff—to work together at a university that meets the challenges of the 21st century not only with academic excellence, but also with social responsibility.
The highlighted goals of LMU Sustainability Week (LMU-SW) can be summarized as follows:
© Valerio Agolino Fotograf
Sustainability, when understood comprehensively, can be linked to almost any scientific discipline:
For this very reason, Sustainability Week offers a valuable opportunity for all faculties and lecturers to address the topic of sustainability from their own subject-specific perspective and explicitly integrate it into their courses. On the other hand, opening up the courses to students from other subjects and interested guests also makes it possible for them to attend and promotes interdisciplinary exchange.
Examples:
This is precisely why Sustainability Week offers a valuable opportunity for all faculties and lecturers to address the topic of sustainability from their own professional perspective and to explicitly integrate it into their courses. In addition, opening up the courses to students from other disciplines and interested guests promotes interdisciplinary exchange.
Examples:
Are you a lecturer at LMU and would like to participate in the Sustainability Week with your course in the winter semester by organising the content of the corresponding session in calendar week 45 on sustainability topics? We look forward to your contribution! Please let us know the topic, time and location of the course by XX using the input mask below so that we can include it in the programme.
Are you a student at LMU and would like to have the topic of sustainability covered in your degree programme during Sustainability Week? Feel free to contact the relevant lecturers to make them aware of Sustainability Week and encourage them to get involved! Offer to help organise the relevant session!
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How can sustainability issues be systematically integrated into university teaching? What resources are already available for this purpose? And how can courses be designed to align with education for sustainable development (ESD)?
As part of Sustainability Week, lecturers can participate in events on continuing education in university teaching to gain inspiration for their own teaching.
On Friday, November 7, 2025 , the MZN will bring together all LMU stakeholders involved in sustainability. The aim of the meeting is to exchange ideas, network, develop a strategy for raising awareness of the initiatives, and create synergies.
Time: 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Location: Small auditorium
Professor of Applied Physical Geography, Dean of Studies
Member of the MZN Executive Board, Deputy Spokesperson
Coordination el mundo – Nachhaltigkeit in Studium und Lehre
Member of the Executive Board of the Munich Centre for Sustainability
Professor of Statistics, former head of the Statistical Consulting Laboratory at LMU
Coordination of minor subject Sustainability
Managing Director of MZN, extraordinary member