About

1. AMA explores relational ways of knowing, being, and doing. We aspire to integrate personal and socio-ecological aspects of transformation.

2. We strive for systems aliveness.

3. We co-create conditions for a flourishing Earth community. We cultivate harmonious relationships and communities of all beings.

4. We acknowledge our limits. We open ourselves up to an iterative process of including diversity into more complex, coherent, and evolving ways of knowing, being, and doing.

5. We embrace multiple truths. Everything is context specific. We cultivate our capacity for generative conflict built on trust, safety, and support. We honor the diversity of approaches to transformation and do not seek consensus.

6. We see transformation as a dynamic process of the ‘self’ in relation to the ‘world.’ We create worlds, and worlds create us. We are always worlding.

7. We are an emerging commons. The outcomes belong to everyone. We create conditions of emergence through non-attachment, by giving and sharing from a mindset of abundance, and surrendering to the outcomes beyond our understandings.   

The AMA project is hosted by the research group TranS-Mind of the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies IASS, including the following people:

• Dr. Thomas Bruhn (Physics, Group Leader)
• Valerie Voggenreiter (Global Change Management)
• Carolin Fraude (Education)
• Nicolai Herzog (Communication in Social and Economic Context)
• Prof. Mark Lawrence (Atmospheric Sciences, responsible Scientific Director)

Earlier IASS staff members in the earlier phases of the project included

• Jessica Böhme (Engineering, Coaching)
• Dr. Man Fang (Psychology, Public Administration)
• Miriam Bui (Ecology and Environmental Planning)
• Dr. Zoe Lüthi (Atmospheric Sciences)
• Melody Travers (Philosophy)
• Matthias Pommerening (Psychology)
• Zack Walsh (Religious Studies, Philosophy, Contemplative Study)

Beyond these core members from the IASS, the AMA project sees itself as hub of a self-organized emerging network hosting numerous fellows and other guests. This means that while all members of the AMA project join the project through the shared intention all team members and guests determine for themselves how the joint reflection and engagement process translates into action. An overview of the different team members’ profiles and activities is granted by the web-database.

Our Vision

Our vision is a global movement of people and institutions engaging in inner transformations as an integral part of learning sustainable practices and as contributions to our overarching vision of a just a peaceful world with harmony among human and non-human beings.

Our Mission

Our mission is to offer reflexive space and empowerment to change agents that are motivated by our guiding question and share our intention to integrate the cultivation of inner human qualities into our diverse and context specific efforts for sustainability. For this purpose we want to advance scientific and popular understanding and legitimacy to the connection between these two fields. We build bridges between often dispersed people and institutions to allow for the unfolding of synergies. And we engage in a continuous cultivation of our own inner selves aspiring at translating our findings into practice and trying to live the change we care about. The purpose of this website is to facilitate this mission.

There are very different ways how people are involved in the AMA project and its community. The following roles describe these different levels of engagement.

Staff members are people employed for the AMA project at the IASS Potsdam. They are responsible for the overall project framework, strategy and administration.

Fellows are working with the AMA project and supported financially through a stipend or honorary contract for a limited period of time.

Visiting researchers are invited to join and work with the project team for a short time (usually less than four weeks), sometimes with and sometimes without financial compensation.

Curators are in charge of editing and curating the content of the web-database. They add content themselves and review contributions uploaded from other community members (users, contributors).  

Partners are institutions (or individuals) collaborating actively with AMA on a longer term basis. They support the intention of the platform and help developing the direction and framing of the project

Mentors are personally committed advisors who provide strategic guidance, advice and support to members of staff and the overall course of the project.

Collaborators are or have been collaborating with the AMA project for a specific activity, i.e. research process or event. They do not declare any longer term commitment of support to the AMA project.

Guests are people who have been invited as speakers, experts or impulse givers to any of our activities. They do not declare any kind of formal support to the AMA project.

The interactive database is a resource to catalyze the learning process of a global community of change agents (individuals and institutions) exploring the synergies between “inner” personal and socio-ecological aspects of transformation.

Its specific purpose is three-fold:

• An orientation and match-making tool for the community – People interested in the scope of the AMA project can explore the database through various visualization and navigation tools to find material and contacts according to their interests and context. The purpose is not to be a platform for online communication. Rather, we want to provide visibility and access to foster connections and processes that can take place elsewhere in more personal contexts.
• A catalyst for the visibility of our emerging field – By aggregating content and identifying areas of complementarity, the website’s visualizations strengthen the visibility of our fields of interest. It shows that across apparent differences the many often dispersed threads constitute an emerging trend of critical relevance.
• Making the AMA project accessible to the public – The website provides basic information about the AMA project, its members, and contributors. It also offers opportunities for interested people to become part of the network and contribute content to the website.

In the three threads Understand, Connect, Practice & Inspire the project pursues the following activities:

Understand

• We develop a conceptual framework for systems transformation that integrates subjectivity transformation and socio-ecological aspects of transformation.
• In academic and other publications we provide an overview on the bodies of literature and research that seek similar integration in specific disciplinary fields
• We publish case studies on specific examples of integration of inner transformation and systems change towards sustainability

Connect

• We curate an interactive visualized database that provides access to information about people, organizations, events and publications that connect aspects of inner transformation and socio-ecological aspects of sustainability.
• We provide reflection & dialogue spaces (e.g at the UNFCCC conferences) to support stakeholders in aligning their action with their deeper intentions and values.
• We host events that allow stakeholders to connect with like-minded but complementary change agents in order to form effective trans-sectoral and trans-disciplinary cooperation and alliances for sustainability-oriented transformations

Practice & Inspire

• We continuously engage in efforts to transform our own modes of being and acting towards sustainability and support each other in changing habits and practices
• Through a relational communication strategy we make our process and learnings transparent to our environment as sources of inspiration and encouragement
• We conduct processes along a curriculum that supports organizations or networks of change agents in integrating inner transformation into their specific actions towards sustainability

The AMA project was initiated in summer 2015 as an initiative of Prof. Mark Lawrence together with a few researchers in his team at the IASS, especially Dr. Thomas Bruhn and Dr. Maheswar Rupakheti. After a participatory scoping and engagement phase in 2016 it was established as a core-funded IASS research project in January 2017 under the joint leadership of Dr. Thomas Bruhn and Dr. Zoe Lüthi (until 2018) and mentored by Mark Lawrence. Since 2022 is an ongoing activity of the research group TranS-Mind of the IASS under the leadership of Dr. Thomas Bruhn. 

The initiators of the project originally worked as natural scientists in the field of sustainability. In the discourse about sustainability they experienced a dominance of “technocratic” approaches that focus on technological and political “solutions” while the relevance of the inner states of the human mind seemed to be neglected and often even downplayed. When beginning to engage in this field, they perceived significant untapped potential in the cultivation of the human mind as a key dimension of the transformation to sustainability. The ambition to explore and foster these potentials and connect the often dispersed and marginalized change agents in this field led to the initiation of the AMA project.