Arena 2 focuses on core interdisciplinary issues related to human rights, citizenship and security, peace, as well as on challenges to well-being in a global setting. Given EUniWell’s focus on interdisciplinary approaches to well-being, the individual and social well-being research arena seeks to advance a comprehensive approach to exploring, analysing, and assessing different perspectives on well-being and how they can contribute to an interdisciplinary research agenda. EUniWell’s Arena 2 approach explores well-being from a “global” perspective, examining its implications and policy options for improving well-being at the local and global levels as well as the intermediate levels of the national, regional, and supranational levels. This arena is linked to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions.  

Research

EUniWell’s Research in Arena 2 will facilitate interdisciplinary approaches to individual, social and societal well-being that bring together the different disciplinary perspectives to explore core issues related to well-being and the SDG 16. Yet, it should also explore the tensions between the promotion of well-being on the one hand and the advancement of the Sustainable Development Goals on the other.

Education

In parallel to the interdisciplinary research agenda, Arena 2 seeks to promote an ambitious education agenda on interdisciplinary approaches to individual, social, and societal well-being and SDG 16. Furthermore, the education agenda should also focus on how well-being can be institutionalised and enhanced for students, university staff and at the level of university governance. Well-being is thus not only a topic for new educational initiatives but should also be at the centre of how we function as universities, particularly in the post Covid–19 context.

• A joint Master’s Programme Peace Studies is being designed. The War and  Peace Studies Master track is already developed and open to EUniWell students in the academic year 2022-2023.
• Establishment of EUniWell short term and intensive educational programmes, such as a Small Private Online Course (SPOC): “Decentering Epistemologies for Global Well-Being.”

Small private online course (SPOC) “Recentering Epistemologies for Global Well-Being”

This course will facilitate explorations among EUniWell students with students from partnering African universities on contemporary issues that promote global well-being and collaboratively distinguish effective support practices. This will be based on democratic, inclusive, challenge-based, inter- and transdisciplinary principals. The overall objective of the SPOC is to foster collaborative learning processes that enable multiple perspectives on individual and social relations to an entangled past, a common present and a shared future.