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The mapping of university research onto the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is important, as it demonstrates the crucial contributions that research makes to the SDGs while also showing researchers how the SDGs can inform research and enhance research impact. This paper aims to detail a novel and comprehensive research mapping approach implemented by University College Cork (UCC) and helps to guide other higher education institutions (HEIs) who are beginning their own mapping exercises.

This paper adopts a mixed-method approach, involving the quantitative mapping of publications, qualitative impact case studies, and the collation of researchers’ self-assessment data at innovative SDGs workshops.

The workshops generated a high level of engagement from the research community, resulting in 119 impact case studies and 497 researchers mapping their own research to the goals/targets. The results provide a clear picture of the main goals/targets that are the focus of UCC research, at the institutional level, in schools/research centres, and at the researcher level.

This study was resource intensive. Its reach may be challenging for other universities to replicate, as success was supported by UCC’s longstanding institutional commitment to sustainability, the mature structures in place and the practical investment in this project.

The authors are unaware of other universities using this comprehensive approach. While other studies focus on the 17 overarching goals only, UCC research, as far as possible, was mapped at a deeper level to each of the associated SDGs targets.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate, the functioning of value creating configurations and stakeholder interactions in networks of organisations of the retrofit industry for commercial buildings.

A value approach was applied to develop a model of retrofit activities. A Europe wide stakeholder engagement, consisting of over 50 face-to-face interviews with key informants with energy efficiency retrofit (EER) knowledge and expertise, informed analyses on flows of both tangible and intangible value for commercial EER projects.

Given the need to expand the EER marketplace, the sustainability of EER processes is as important as the sustainability of EER project outcomes. Understanding value creation in retrofit processes is crucial to successfully harnessing the available energy savings potential from the built environment.

The increasing importance of externalities, such as carbon, means that previously unaccounted for costs are now being considered in business models. For EER projects, the challenge is to respond to this new business environment, while maintaining adequate value for stakeholders. For commercial property developers, this means a growing impetus to understand the value propositions of other EER stakeholders.

The evaluation of value creation across business relationships such as those of the construction industry has not been conducted in a systematic manner to date. This paper provides a novel application of value analysis. Interrogating materials and monetary flows, value interactions between stakeholders and stakeholder perception of value are vital in fostering the long-term capacity of the EER sector.

Despite the potential for research institutes to advance interdisciplinary research on university campuses, There have been few studies on how interdisciplinary research centres integrate multiple disciplines in practice, how they influence the collaborative behaviours of scientists and how they establish collaborative communities. This study aims to provide a deeper understanding of how interdisciplinary research is being enabled at research institutes and offers signposts for how research institutes can further embed interdisciplinarity within their units.

Within this study, 30 interviews were conducted with leadership and faculty within 4 sustainability research institutes in the USA exploring how research institutes support interdisciplinary research within their units. A thematic analysis on the interview data revealed themes on how research institutes are enabling interdisciplinary research within their organisations and universities.

The study highlights eight themes on how research institutes are, and can further, enable interdisciplinary research within their organisations and universities. Some of the themes are fully implemented within the research institutes, whilst others are more aspirational and highlight where institutes can create additional capability and capacity for interdisciplinary research within their units and universities.

Whilst the study is limited to four major sustainability research institutes the findings will be applicable to all research centres and institutes attempting to create interdisciplinary research environments.

The study will be of particular interest to research institutes and university leadership who wish to cultivate a deeper culture of interdisciplinary research within their organisations.

The advancement of inter- and transdisciplinary research within universities are seen by many academic institutions, expert groups and funding bodies as essential for solving wicked problems and grand challenges facing society. The findings of this paper will help universities increase their capacity for interdisciplinary research.

There are few comparable publications in terms of methodology, approach and focus on research institutes.