During Change Making (Co-creating Sustainable Future(s)), students initiate, create, and evaluate innovative transitions together with other societal professionals. There are all sorts of urgent societal and ecological issues that require cross-disciplinary collaboration, such as climate change, food shortages, loss of biodiversity, armed conflicts, refugee flows, increasing inequality of opportunity, and political polarisation. Essentially, students and professionals collaborate as a 'think tank' together on a transition issue, using the transition cycle as the leading approach.

Examples of transition issues: 

• What if we stopped using disposable plastic? 

• What if we powered a city on AI? 

• What if public education allowed students of all backgrounds to choose their path? 

• What if everyone had equal access to healthcare? 

What is Change Making? 

Change Making goes beyond traditional education and uses the Transition Cycle. It has the following unique features: 

• Co-learning: students and professionals from the field genuinely work together, doing so from various disciplinary perspectives and areas of expertise. 

• Joint vision formation: Change Makers create a shared vision for the future. They do this by employing imagination and innovative thinking and breaking through prevailing systems. 

• Interventions in the real world: Change Makers go beyond theory by jointly carrying out small-scale, real interventions.

• Emphasis on reflection and personal growth: Change Makers learn to know their own motivations and capabilities.

Themes 

The theme of the course differs every half-year. The coming semester (block 2 & 3 of the academic year 2024-2025) will focus on co-creating Sustainable Future(s). The following semesters will cover the themes of Healthy Future (block 5 & 6, 2024-2025), Fair & Resilient society (block 1 & 2, 2025-2026), and Digitalisation (block 5 & 6, 2025-2026). 

Coordinator

Debby Gerritsen

Timetable

Students have class three times a week from 10 AM until 1 PM. You can find the timetable on Datanose.

Admission Requirements 

This 18 ECTS elective is suitable for all UvA Bachelor's students. Students need to have acquired at least 60 ECTS in their bachelor's degree before starting this elective.

Summary: 

• Theme: Sustainable Future(s)
• Credits: 18 ECTS
• Teaching period: block 2 & 3 (or block 5 & 6, full-time education)
• Location: REC
• Small-scale education: 25 students + 5 co-learners per theme 
• Language of instruction: English (and Dutch, if possible within your team)

Application and Admission 

A maximum of 25 students can participate in this course. Application is possible from 19 August until 26 August or from 14 October until 21 October and can be done using GLASS. Students can also sign-up in the Master’s students can send a short motivation to keuzeonderwijs-iis@uva.nl.

Costs

Prices can be found on the IIS website.

SDGs in education

The IIS strives to reflect current societal issues and challenges in our elective courses, honours modules and degree programmes, and attempts to integrate the following Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in this course. For more information about these goals, please visit the SDGs website

More information

If you have any questions, please email keuzeonderwijs-iis@uva.nl. The Course Catalogue information will become available later this month.