The United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) suggest a useful framework; however, they lack well-defined indicators, failing to account for resource interlinkages. Resource nexus thinking has gained traction recently since it targets synergies and helps avoid competition of resources. Additionally, decoupling economic growth from emissions and resource use has been sought after, and attempted through 'sustainable growth' and 'green growth' within the SDGs. This is a paradox since growth and climate mitigation are not compatible; growth has significant environmental and social costs. Consequently, critics of green growth (and subsequently the SDGs) are gravitating towards degrowth (which is not mentioned in the SDGs), whose goal is to reduce economic activity, reaching a level that is ecologically sustainable. Although degrowth has the virtue of recognising the concrete limits of global growth, it is still under development and has faced criticism, since it rarely presents implementable actions, with most research concentrating on conceptual essays. This project will integrate the postgrowth and resource nexus literatures to construct an analytical framework of indicators, to improve on existing SDG indicators (regarding water, energy, land, and materials), in a move away from green growth and decoupling principles, and towards principles of equity and sufficiency. The framework will consist of critical indicators accounting for embodied resource use to help towards an equitable downscaling of resource throughput. The extent of North and South’s “unequal exchange” will be quantified, critical resources and degrowth potential for different countries will be identified, while the limits to growth will be tested. Finally, this project will inform a meaningful discussion around green growth/postgrowth within the SDGs and elaborate specific and practical policy recommendations for the improvement of SDG indicators for both 2030 and beyond.

The ‘VIA-TARIQ’ is an interdisciplinary project that aims to explore key topic among the archaeologists and historians of the Near East: what is the level of persistency/discontinuity of the Roman road system in the longue durée and what influences it had on the social and economic developments in the Medieval and modern period. The project will approach these issues through analysis of large aggregated archaeological datasets and advanced spatial modelling methods, enabled through training in these methods at the host institution. The project will significantly add to our understanding of the centuries-long change and development of the road and transport networks in the Levant. It will illuminate the long-term effects of the Roman road infrastructure on the economic developments in the Medieval and Ottoman periods. The training and research offered by the project will position the applicant as an expert in archaeological computational modelling for the study of the past and will enable him to influence paradigms and inform debates in the history and archaeology of the Near East.