2020 ATLAS Distinguished Medal of Lectureship Award Recipient
Thursday, November 12, 2020, at 9:00 a.m.

About the speaker: Dr. Roderick Lawrence graduated from the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning at the University of Adelaide (Australia) with First Class Honours. He has a Master Degree from the University of Cambridge (England) and a Doctorate of Science from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale, Lausanne, (Switzerland). In 1999 he was nominated Professor in the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences at the University of Geneva. He was promoted to Honorary Professor in October 2015. He was also Honorary Adjunct Professor at the University of Adelaide (2017-2020), and Adjunct Professor at the Institute for Environment and Development (LESTARI) at the National University of Malaysia (UKM) from 2011 to 2019. He was Visiting Professor at the Institute for Global Health at the United Nations University (UNU-IIGH) from 2014 to 2016. He was founding Director of the Certificate for Advanced Studies in Sustainable Development at the University of Geneva from 2003 until 2016, and Director of the Global Environmental Policy Program (GEPP) from 2010 until 2016. Since 2017 he has been Invited Professor at the Swiss Universities Doctoral School on Inter- and Trans-disciplinary Research.

Talk title: "Complexity of COVID-19: Transdisciplinary Responses"

The propagation of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and the health, economic and social impacts of Covid-19 are complex, emergent, and unpredictable. This pandemic should be considered as a societal challenge that is a test for systemic thinking and concerted actions in the context of uncertainty. Here we describe the virtuous relations between three prerequisite conditions - multilevel governance; knowledge and types of resources; and individual and collective behaviors - that should be combined in transdisciplinary responses by concerted action at local and national levels.