Call for Expressions of Interest: Become a UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES Hub

What is a hub?

BRIDGES hubs are the operational arm of an international initiative that transcends borders and enhances efforts at a range of scales to mobilise academic communities in the humanities, arts and other human science and social science-orientated communities of knowledge and action in the sustainability science space.

Benefits of being a hub

Hosting a hub offers significant benefits, particularly in fostering transdisciplinary collaboration, advancing sustainability, and empowering local communities. The UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES hubs draw on and contribute to UNESCO's networks of global experts, institutions and policymakers, helping expand the reach and impact of local projects, facilitating the exchange of ideas, resources and expertise, and also providing excellent visibility in intergovernmental bodies and processes. Serving as key operational nodes in the UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES Coalition, hubs gain substantial international credibility through affiliation with a prioritised UNESCO programme, offering visibility on the global stage and the opportunity to contribute directly to UNESCO’s global agenda.

UNESCO’s Science-Policy Interface

An integrated part of UNESCO’s MOST (Management of Social Transformations) programme, BRIDGES has direct access to and regular engagement with MOST’s Intergovernmental Council and Scientific Advisory Council, effectively bridging the gap between knowledge production and policy. This connection enables the research activities and outcomes of hub to be more easily translated into actionable policies in support of global sustainability goals, while also informing developing policies through knowledge exchange and recommendations. BRIDGES hubs/programme offices and the organisations supporting them can take advantage of the potential for collaboration with a wide range of international actors and Member States, amplifying the impact of the hub’s work and contributing to both national and international policy dialogues.

The Benefits of UNESCO's Networks and Global Reach

Transdisciplinarity

BRIDGES upholds UNESCO’s approach to promoting research that can lead to more effective solutions to global challenges. By facilitating collaboration across academic disciplines, sectors and cultural boundaries, BRIDGES champions innovative collaborations and holistic solutions that address both scientific and community needs. At the heart of the BRIDGES model is a commitment to co-design and co-creation of research, knowledge development and applied solutions. By involving communities directly in the research process, hubs work to ensure that approaches and potential solutions they promote are effective by being both scientifically rigorous and locally accepted.

Increased Collaborative Opportunities

Hubs enable host institutions to have greatly increased opportunities for collaboration, exchange and development of programmes, while serving as change-agents within the international sustainability science community. Particular opportunities can be developed through UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES hubs to have national, regional and local (including institutional) impacts through specific site-based activities and projects, in partnership with diverse actors from different sectors.

Enhanced Influence

Hubs are afforded enhanced opportunities to access significant global expertise, resources, communication channels, and networks, to connect with well-established scientific, educational, policy, governance and advocacy communities, and to build local capacities by linking to new projects and programmes at the international front-line of integrated sustainability science. Hubs also have the opportunity to help shape engagements at national, regional, and international levels, including enhanced capabilities for engagement in international scientific assessment platforms and science-policy processes/interfaces.

Access to Expanded Expertise and Funding Opportunities

Hubs gain access to a significant increase in global research engagement and participation, particularly as the U.N. Decade of Action for the SDGs moves into its second 5-year period and beyond. This provides hubs with enhanced opportunities to connect to international research, educational funding, and transdisciplinary collaborations, driving innovative approaches to sustainability science and positioning hubs to play a key role in global programmes and processes.

Empowering Local Communities

Hubs ensure that local communities play an active role in decision-making, empowering them to shape their futures with locally relevant, culturally sensitive solutions, directly ties to UNESCO’s mandate of promoting inclusive knowledge-sharing and community engagement in research.

Promoting Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

BRIDGES hubs are committed to advancing the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), while also being keen to engage complementary frameworks with concordant ambitions. They aim to do so by integrating such frameworks and goals into the local context, thereby ensuring that solutions address both global realities and local needs. By aligning local efforts with international frameworks like the SDGs, UNESCO's focus on promoting sustainable development is reinforced, and local solutions become part of a broader global movement.

In sum, operating a UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES Hub offers the advantage of working within a well-established, globally recognised framework for research that bridges science and policy. By connecting local efforts with international networks and leveraging UNESCO’s resources, BRIDGES’ hubs become powerful tools for addressing sustainability challenges, empowering communities and advancing global sustainability ambitions.

Submission Process

Application is by EIO. Please submit your EOI, as a pdf, to directorate@bridgesearth.org

Guidelines for preparing applications to host BRIDGES hubs

Before writing your Expression of Interest, please read the supporting linked documentation. An appropriately prepared hub proposal is likely to be 10-15 pages in length.

BRIDGES hubs must

1. provide appropriate technical, intellectual, and infrastructural resources/capacities (financial and/or in-kind) necessary to host a hub with institutional, regional/thematic and international components enabling the BRIDGES mission (BRIDGES Terms of Reference Annexes 1, 2 and 4);
2. devote key staff and institutional resources to ensuring the BRIDGES core mission is met; such contributions should lend support to coordination and implementation of a research network – including initiatives, projects and programmes that furthers the international mandate and ambitions of UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES – while also building appropriate capacities locally/institutionally that bring added value to the organization supporting the hub;
3. provide the means and the opportunity to generate usable knowledge for and developed together with a broad range of societal partners, in and outside academia, as applicable at local, national, regional and international scopes of engagement;
4. coordinate and co-manage communications activities;
5. contribute to advocacy efforts in institutional, national, and international sustainability science-policy and sustainability education-policy contexts that draw on the human sciences;
6. pursue support of relevant projects and programmes central to the BRIDGES mission through various external funding sources;
7. commit to act as ambassadors for the UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES Coalition.

In the current phase of the BRIDGES Coalition, it is recommended that threshold staffing capacities for hubs fall between 2.0 fte and 2.5 fte staff, though hub staff can be spread over numerous (including part-time) positions at varying levels of seniority.

Next Steps

All applications will be reviewed, and selected candidates will be invited for further discussions. 
For any enquiries, please contact us at directorate@bridgesearth.org.