83 Blurring Boundaries to Shape Change: The Role of Stakeholder Engagement in ESD at the Kemmy Business School

Dr Annmarie Ryan explored how stakeholder engagement is used as a transformative pedagogical strategy in the Kemmy Business School (KBS), with the aim of connecting disciplinary learning to real-world socio-environmental challenges. Building on KBS’s long-standing commitments to social justice and responsible management education—reinforced through its status as a PRME Champion School—Dr Ryan discussed how ESD invites academics to rethink disciplinary assumptions, interrogate values, and situate business education within the realities of climate change, inequality, and systemic interdependence.

Dr Ryan presented a framework illustrating three modes of stakeholder engagement: guest contributions within the classroom; live cases and problem-based learning where students co-create solutions with external partners; and immersive, studio-based collaboration where boundaries between university and community dissolve. The Digital Futures Lab exemplifies the deepest form of this engagement. Here, master’s students work alongside regional actors—such as the Midwest Bioregion Network—to analyse system-level food sustainability challenges, generate design-led interventions, and present these in public exhibitions.

This approach develops students’ agency, systems thinking, and capacity for interdisciplinary collaboration, while enabling stakeholders to articulate needs, shape briefs, and engage in co-creation. Dr Ryan emphasised that such deeply embedded engagement demands resourcing, facilitation, and recognition, but yields significant value: it integrates teaching, research and societal impact, and offers a powerful space for students to practise active citizenship and transformative problem-solving.