WICKED PROBLEMS
Guinea-Bissau as a microcosm of global inequality
A transdisciplinary workshop 1-4 September 2025 brings together scholars across the world to explore how global challenges - climate change, health disparities, economic inequality, and cultural resilience - manifest in one of the world’s most vulnerable regions: Guinea-Bissau.
The workshop is part of Climate-Nature-Health Nexus and Inequality: Complex Cross-Sectorial Challenges in West Africa, a DIAS-rooted project led by researchers across SDU, which investigates how climate change disproportionately affects the world’s poorest countries.
Often referred to as “the immorality of the 21st century,” this inequality results in severe environmental, economic, and health consequences for underprivileged nations.
Guinea-Bissau, a small West African country, serves as a compelling case study. For nearly five decades, the Bandim Health Project has collected individual-level health and demographic data. This rich dataset provides a unique foundation for understanding how systemic global issues play out locally.
A wicked problem
Guinean Gatherings will convene researchers from across disciplines, including sociology, environmental anthropology, biology, climate science, health sciences, linguistics, cognitive science, and ecological economics. Together, they will examine Guinea-Bissau as a microcosm of global inequality, exploring how local experiences and data can inform broader solutions to complex, interconnected problems.
The initiative spans all five faculties at SDU, emphasising the need for cross-sectoral approaches to tackle “wicked” problems”: those that are deeply entangled and resistant to simple solutions.
The workshop s marks the beginning of an ambitious collaboration aiming not only to generate new academic insights but also to foster partnerships that can contribute to improving living conditions in some of the world’s most affected communities.
SDU researchers affiliated with the project
- Søren Askegaard (SAMF)
- Sebastian Mernild (NAT)
- Sune Vork Steffensen (HUM)
- Shriram Venkatraman (SAMF)
- Gareth Milward (HUM)
- Carolin Löscher (NAT)
- Angela Chang (SUND)
- Karl Attard (NAT)
- Cintia Organo Quintana (NAT)
- Maria Elo (SAMF)
- Elzbieta Pastucha (TEK)
- Sani Abdullahi (TEK)
- Parisa Niloofar (TEK)
- Ane Fisker (SUND)
- Peter Aaby (SUND)
- Ulrik Pagh Schultz Lundquist (TEK)
- Christine Stabell Benn (SUND, Bandim Health Project).