The proceedings of the joint IRDO Conferences on "Socially Responsible Society", which took place virtually on 10 and 11 June 2021, have been published. The event was supported by the COPERNICUS Alliance with a Micro Fund and featured a contribution by Anne Zimmermann and HES2020 colleagues on "Creative virtual conferencing and networking to advance higher education for sustainable development".
The article (Download) presents the path taken by the COPERNICUS Alliance and its partners to design two online conferences. It discusses how future academic conferences may look like. Networks, institutions, and individuals who believe that a decisive move must be made in the direction of sustainable development are increasingly in favor of virtual conferences. They are exploring new formats to ensure that such conferences offer participants the space for creativity, networking, chance meetings, career-oriented self-presentation and coaching, policy-oriented reflection, trust-building, and learning, with a view to shaping higher education for sustainable development in an innovative and convincing way.
About the IRDO Conferences
Two conferences were held as one joint event: The 16th IRDO International Scientific Conference on “SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND CHALLENGES OF 2021: Challenges and Opportunities of Digitization for a Sustainable Future”, and the “First National Professional and Business Conference IRDO and Citizens' Initiatives for Integral Green Slovenia: Challenges and Opportunities for the sustainable development of Slovenia in the European context”.
More than 80 authors from ten countries (Slovenia, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Croatia, Poland, United Kingdom, India, Israel, Spain) participated with almost 40 papers.
The chairman of the conference program committee, Prof. Dr., Dr. Matjaž Mulej said: “According to known data, this is the first joint conference in the world to talk about a socially responsible society, and the 16th international conference on social responsibility, for the first time in two parts. It is related to over 20 books by IRDO members and “Introduction to the Political Economy of a Socially Responsible Society” (Mulej, Merhar, Žakelj and co-authors, 2019, in Slovene), the first about this topic in the world.