Interdisciplinary work
There is one catch, however: Kathan does not exist. It’s part of an in-depth simulation, one of the final assignments for the undergraduate course Systems Thinking for Peace: Analysing Global Conflicts. In this interdisciplinary course, students explore why complex conflicts arise and how they can be resolved. In just six weeks, they develop skills such as active listening, alliance-building, and spotting media biases and power dynamics.
The course was developed by academics from Law, Humanities, and Educational Sciences, each contributing their own approach to understanding how conflicts escalate and how they can be resolved. The team spent months bridging disciplinary differences, a process that closely mirrored the kind of collaboration they now ask of their students.
Despoina Georgiou, Assistant Professor in Pedagogical and Educational Sciences, came up with the idea after visiting Belfast, which still bears the scars of thirty years of conflict. Devastated by this legacy and its similarity to current conflicts, she looked for a way to support students’ peace-making skills. “I went through the full list of university courses, not just in my department, and there wasn’t anything like it,” she explains. The course’s innovative blend of systematic thinking, interdisciplinarity, and practical, real-life skills is what sets it apart.
The choice for a make-believe country was not made lightly, especially considering the university itself is dealing with an increasingly polarised student population. “We played around with the idea of touching upon an existing conflict,” says Georgiou, “but our aim is to train a conflict resolution skill set. A fictional setting makes the learning environment more adaptive, allowing students to practice negotiation and perspective-taking without the emotional weight of real-world political positions.”
