New open course teaches researchers sustainability advocacy skills
UNICEF 5-step cycle helps turn eco-concern into institutional change
A group of researchers including Kirsty Pringle, Lorna Smith, Erinma Ochu, and software-carpentry co-founder Greg Wilson have published a new open-access course designed to help researchers translate environmental concern into lasting institutional change. The course, detailed in an arXiv paper accepted at the LOCO 2026 workshop, targets researchers, research software engineers, and technical professionals who understand the need to reduce digital research's carbon footprint but lack the skills to drive organizational transformation.
The curriculum is structured around UNICEF's five-step advocacy cycle, teaching concrete techniques such as stakeholder analysis, power mapping, coalition building, storytelling, framing, and evaluation. It's grounded in UK policy frameworks like the Concordat for Environmental Sustainability and the UKRI Environmental Sustainability Strategy, with a fictional case study to make concepts tangible. The material is dual-layer, combining workshop slides with extended self-study notes in a single source, and is freely available under a CC BY 4.0 license. A pilot was delivered at the NetDRIVE Net Zero DRI Summer School in June 2026, and the full paper is available on arXiv.
- Course uses UNICEF's 5-step advocacy cycle with stakeholder analysis, power mapping, coalition building, storytelling, framing, and evaluation
- Freely available under CC BY 4.0; dual-layer format combines workshop slides and extended self-study notes
- Pilot delivered at NetDRIVE Net Zero DRI Summer School (June 2026); accepted at LOCO 2026 workshop
Why It Matters
Equips researchers with practical advocacy skills to reduce digital research's environmental footprint at institutional scale.