70 Integrating Futures Thinking and Transformative Climate Justice

Professor Jennie Stephens introduced a university-wide shift towards embedding futures thinking and transformative climate justice into teaching, research, and community engagement at Maynooth University. Drawing on her work within ICARUS and the social sciences, she emphasised a reframing of climate change as a systemic justice issue rather than solely an environmental or technological problem. Climate justice highlights how ecological disruption is a symptom of deeper structural inequities, and thus positions students to critically interrogate power, economic systems, and the social conditions shaping climate impacts.

Professor Stephens outlined pedagogical approaches that foreground unlearning, critical reflection, and collective visioning. Her second-year elective, Climate Action and Sustainable Development, co-taught with colleagues in Geography, centres on semester-long team projects where students imagine equitable and sustainable future systems — from housing and food to mobility and fashion — in 2050. Using systems thinking tools such as the iceberg model and scenario building, the module encourages students to identify leverage points for transformation and to consider the strategic, political, and cultural barriers to climate action, including corporate obstruction.

Complementing this undergraduate work, Maynooth has established a new micro-credential in Climate Action and Sustainable Development, designed to support teachers implementing the new Leaving Certificate subject of the same name, alongside existing postgraduate programmes in Climate Change and Spatial Justice. Professor Stephens highlighted the growing demand for integrative climate justice education and the importance of strengthening institutional coordination across faculties to support a more coherent and future-oriented ESD landscape.

About the author

name: Professor Jennie Stephens

institution: Maynooth University

Professor Jennie Stephens is a Professor of Climate Justice at Maynooth University.