Transformation Module
The UNESCO Chair is responsible for the Transformation Module, a required module in the first semester at Leuphana University Lüneburg (10 CP, 300 hours of workload) and part of the Leuphana Semester. The module aims to develop students' ability to analyse processes of social transformation critically and reflectively, with regard to their origins and dynamics, and to help shape them towards desirable outcomes.
Introduced in the winter semester 2025/26, the module brings together and develops further the earlier modules “Science Problematizes: Critical Thinking” and “Science Transforms: Responsible Action”. Its roots go back to the module “Science bears responsibility”, with which all first-year students have engaged with sustainable development since the Leuphana Semester was introduced in 2007. The module is led by Daniel Fischer and Roberto Nigro and coordinated by Laura Picht-Wiggering and Lina Bürgener.
Seminar
Shaping solutions in research projects
Exercise
Questioning concepts and theories
Conference week
Students present their findings
Lecture, seminar and exercise · Conference week · History of the module · All posts on the module
Lecture, seminar and exercise
Lecture, seminar and exercise together form the “T” of the Transformation Module. The lecture provides a broad theoretical and conceptual framework. It offers a multi-perspective introduction to the current discourse on socio-ecological transformation and its historical development, structured around main topics such as transformation, values, justice and responsibility. Seminar and exercise each go deeper into one of these topics.
The seminar takes a design- and problem-solving-oriented approach to current transformation challenges: in the mode of research-based learning, students develop future-oriented solutions to societal challenges in projects. The exercise deepens the understanding of scientific work through a critical exploration of specific concepts and ideas, so that students learn to trace the connections and origins of concepts, opinions and theories as well as the conditions of current societal challenges.
Conference week
The module includes a conference week with three conference days, more than 1,200 students and more than 30 guest speakers. The conference week is open to the public.
The conference week 2026 took place from 25 to 27 February under the title “Saving the West? An invention at its tipping point” and asked what remains of the West as an idea, an order and an orientation. Around 1,500 first-semester students presented the insights from their projects in the Transformation Module on the main stage, in workshops and in exhibitions. They discussed with guests from politics, society, business and research, among them Maja Göpel, Sigmar Gabriel, Emilia Roig and Markus Rex. Interested citizens from Lüneburg and the region were invited to the public events.
Films from earlier conference weeks (in German, with English subtitles available):
2025: Security or Justice?
2022: New Deal: green & colourful (teaser)
2021: Power to the Cities
2020: The Wealth of Europe
History of the module
First steps
With the project “Agenda 21 – University of Lüneburg”, funded by the German Federal Environmental Foundation, the university starts a sustainability process. Students take part through courses and a newly developed three-semester supplementary programme in sustainability.
A UNESCO Chair
The UNESCO Chair in Higher Education for Sustainable Development is established in Lüneburg.
Science bears responsibility
With the new Leuphana Bachelor, all first-year students start with the Leuphana Semester. At its centre is the module “Wissenschaft trägt Verantwortung” (Science bears responsibility): a lecture, project seminars and tutorials in which students explore questions of sustainable development across disciplines.
The first conference week
In February, first-year students present the results of their project seminars at the first conference week, held over four days and open to the university public.
A community of practice
Each year, around 30 teachers of the module meet for a three-day workshop at Burg Lenzen to prepare their project seminars. The workshop was developed by the UNESCO Chair together with the Leuphana College.
1,500 first-year students
The module now invites around 1,500 first-year students each year to reflect on sustainable development from a scientific perspective.
Ten years
For its tenth anniversary, the conference week, under the question “Was macht die Welt gerecht?”, again extends over four days.
Conference week goes digital
Under the conditions of the pandemic, the first digital conference week takes place.
Science transforms
Renamed “Science Transforms: Responsible Action”, the module is complemented with elements of data literacy education, including exercises in programming with Python.
The Transformation Module
In the winter semester 2025/26, the Transformation Module replaces the modules “Science Problematizes: Critical Thinking” and “Science Transforms: Responsible Action”. Lecture, seminar and exercise are organised around four topics: transformation, values, justice and responsibility.
Saving the West?
The first conference week of the new module asks what remains of “the West” as an idea, an order and a source of orientation.
All posts on the module
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