Accountability is a concept that permeates virtually all disciplines and practices. At a first glance, accountability can be understood as “the fact of being responsible for what you do and able to give a satisfactory reason for it or the degree to which this happens”, its meaning and application across disciplines can vary greatly.

Given the different areas of expertise that are represented in the Agenda 2030 Graduate School, we set out to generate a representation of the diversity of our perspectives and opinions of accountability in connection to sustainable development. The question “how do the SDGs (or more broadly ‘sustainability’) increase and/or shape accountability in your field?” steered our reflections.

With the belief that the multidisciplinarity and diversity of the Agenda 2030 Graduate School has great potential in terms of innovative thinking the PhD students were, in an internal seminar, challenged to attend to the mentioned guiding question by reflecting on the challenges and opportunities of looking at the SDGs from an accountability perspective.