HUD’s core research is tightly integrated into teaching at the University of Copenhagen, Geneva Graduate Institute, and HEAD Genève. Teaching cuts across BA, MA, and PhD levels and focuses on giving students the skills to work with transdisciplinary concepts, methods, and approaches to understanding the politics of humanitarian design. Listed below are the courses convened by HUD’s core team to date.

Courses to Date:

1. The Interiors of Humanitarian Design
2. Art and Design Methods for the Social Sciences
3. Filmmaking, Activism and Social Impact in International Relations
4. Conflict, Forced Migration, and Humanitarian Aid practice
5. Humanitarianism and Social Media
6. Approaches to International Conflicts

1.

The Interiors of Humanitarian Design

The Interiors of Humanitarian Design investigates the utilization of emerging technologies, design processes, and knowledge from political science to address humanitarian crises, with a particular emphasis on interior spaces. This interdisciplinary course aims to discover innovative solutions and enhance the living conditions of individuals affected by humanitarian emergencies. Contemporary conflicts are occurring more frequently and enduring longer, refugee flows are rapidly destabilizing geopolitical structures, and humanitarian actors are facing increasing threats. Given these challenges, the course is organized around experimental action research, in which international-relations scholars will collaborate with architects, designers, and engineers to enhance humanitarian practices and conditions.

This course aims to: 1) integrate ‘high theoretical’ and ‘critical’ social scientific concepts into practical applications, including humanitarian work, 2) explore collaboration between social sciences and engineering, architecture, and design, and 3) address the urgent task of interdisciplinary collaboration to improve conditions for vulnerable populations, especially in light of recent geopolitical events. The course is a collaboration between the Geneva Graduate Institute, the University of Copenhagen, the Department of Interior Architecture at HEAD – Genève, and the EssentialTechLab at EPFL Lausanne, with contributions from partners like Médecins Sans Frontières, Terre des Hommes, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and humanitarian institutions in Colombia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

2.

Art and Design Methods for the Social Sciences

Graffiti has been credited with sparking revolutions and civil wars. Photographs have revealed gross human rights abuses, haunting the development of humanitarian and human rights law. Every aspect of a mobile app is meticulously aesthetically designed to monopolize your attention and harvest your data for commercial use. Perhaps the deadliest weapon in history, the AK-47, achieved this status not by being the ‘best’ (i.e. most deadly) rifle but through the mundane design of its ergonomic features in ways that make it accessible even to child soldiers. And the streets we walk everyday have been precisely calibrated by architects to (variously) maximize a mix of well-being, consumerism, security, social exclusion, and more. As each of these examples suggests, art and design methods are central to world politics. They can generate both radical change or a continuation of the status quo, forms of extreme violence or paths to conflict resolution, and much more. But what are the politics of art and design methods and how can social science engage with them?

The objective of this course is to offer participants a hands-on understanding of what it is like to work with art and design Methodologies in the social sciences. At the end of the course, participants will have a thorough grasp of the debates surrounding the politics of such methodologies, practiced working with art and design methods in the social sciences, and experienced exchanging trans-disciplinarily about projects deploying such methods. To this end, the course is organized in three sections. First, we will work with examples from art, architecture, digital and mundane material design to explore the art and design methods and their connections to the social sciences. In the second section, participants will work with an independent project own using methods of their choice. The final section is a daylong workshop where participants will present and discuss their projects in a transdisciplinary context.

Examples of student research:

• Fragments from the Subterranean
• The Shape of Inequalities
• Sinking Spaces

3.

Filmmaking, Activism and Social Impact in International Relations

In troubling times, people pick up cameras and film the world around them. Across history, film and other visual genres have been deployed to bear witness to war, violence, suffering, marginalization, and oppression, as well as to expose the roots of these phenomena. This instinct – to document the world visually – attests to the potential power of film as a medium to change world politics. This elective course explores the theoretical and practical intersections of filmmaking, social impact, and activism in international relations. It does so with a core focus on how filmmaking has been used to explore phenomena related to humanitarian issues globally, especially those linked to contexts of conflict, migration, and violence. Based on an interdisciplinary approach, the course delves into the rich scholarship of visuality across the social sciences, introducing students to that work both theoretically and practically in three main ways.

First, students will engage with critical interdisciplinary perspectives on the role of visual media within contexts of violence through theoretical literature and audio-visual material. Second, the course will explore practical skills in visual research methodologies. As such, in this section of the course, students will be expected to develop a (short) filmmaking project of their own. Workshop-format sessions will be offered to develop the skills necessary to achieve this. Thematically, we will explore how filmmaking can illuminate questions concerning violence, humanitarianism, conflict, and migration in ways that connect local (i.e., Copenhagen) and global contexts. In addition, guest lectures will be organized to inspire and connect students to experts in the field. Finally, students will be asked to reflect on broader questions, debates, and dilemmas that concern the use of filmmaking for social impact, activism, and/or political intervention. This ranges from the critical examination of storytelling techniques, ethical considerations, and the influence of their own situated gaze (i.e., positionality) on crafting visual narratives. We will engage these issues by collaboratively reflecting on the filmmaking project that each student develops in the preceding section of the course. Overall, this course will equip students with a nuanced understanding of the transformative potential of filmmaking, alongside tools to navigate the many ethical challenges intrinsic to visual research.

4.

Conflict, Forced Migration, and Humanitarian Aid Practice

The world is experiencing an unprecedented surge in conflicts, leading to the displacement of thousands of people both within their own countries (IDPs) and across international borders (refugees). These displaced individuals often lack essential resources such as shelter, water, clothing, medical care, and food. To address these urgent needs, international, bilateral, and civil society organizations, along with local actors, frequently engage in fundraising efforts.

This elective course explores the core challenges of three but interrelated concepts of conflicts and forced migration, humanitarianism and development. The course uses real world case studies and research across the globe to explore how conflicts influence discourses and global debates on humanitarianism and development. The course offers students an understanding of the complex and varied nature of conflicts and forced migration, humanitarian aid and development practice, of their centrality to global, regional and national processes of political, social and economic change, and of the needs and aspirations of forcibly displaced people themselves.

Based on an interdisciplinary approach, the course delves into the rich scholarship within social and political science, legal and development studies, anthropology and medical science, introducing students to develop a critical understanding of conflicts and forced migration, humanitarianism and development. Through the course, students will develop tools and approaches needed to respond to conflicts and forced migration, humanitarian response challenge and examine discourses on development practices. Students will also be equipped with analytical training and an in-depth understanding of the challenges of conflicts and forced migration, challenges of contemporary humanitarian aid and its interaction with development practice and new direction in the field. Central to the course will be a focus on wide-ranging knowledge of the field and the tools to critically engage with the pressing questions of power dynamics, politics, accountability, intersectionality, security and access.

The course will present students with comprehensive engagement with theoretical, conceptual and policy debates relating to the challenges of global conflicts, humanitarian response and development. Students will gain knowledge on: Conflicts and Development: Foundations, Concepts and Debates; Conflicts, Migration and Development: Analytical, and Policy perspectives; Issues in Forced Migration: Refugee law and Human Rights; Humanitarianism: Ideas, Actors and Debates; Humanitarianism: Issues and Challenges; International Actors and Civil society linkages in Humanitarianism practice; Discourses in Humanitarian practice: From localization to the Triple Nexus; and context-specific challenges and agendas from the Global south. The course will link theory to practice through engagement with guest speakers, story sharing by forced migrants from Uganda and DRC, and a wide range of materials including literature, case studies, archival documents, and policy reports.

The course shall place emphasis on student-centered and engaged learning, and critical thinking through discussion forums and debates. Modules span a wide variety of topics allowing students to focus on special areas of interest and utilise innovative and cutting-edge pedagogies such as podcasts, visual presentations, and learning diaries.

5.

Humanitarianism and social media

Over the last two centuries, the public’s relationship with war and humanitarian crises has shifted in two opposing yet complementary ways. The first shift results in a distancing of our gaze; we are now concerned with crises in remote locations, whereas previously, we could only foresee those in close cities, regions, or countries. The second shift goes the opposite, embodying closeness and constant presence, even as it remains remarkably absent from our daily lives. Today, civilians can report the daily impacts of wars, conflicts, and humanitarian crises. Images are no longer created solely by external reporters but directly by those affected. Equipped with a smartphone and internet access, victims assume the dual role of live witnesses. This marks a gradual change in perspective, where the human body has gained prominence in representation. Bodies not only testify to a presence but also become personalised expressions of suffering, relief, or even resistance. This proximity influences the types of bodies depicted, as they do not conform to Westernised expectations. Simultaneously, algorithms serve as gatekeepers, often functioning as black boxes that can introduce new biases. Meanwhile, thousands of live image testimonials are generated on the ground; graphically appealing images are favoured, erasing raw suffering.

Humanitarianism and Social Media critically analyses the spatial representation of the human body in the context of ongoing humanitarian crises. This course aims to offer a political understanding of the construction of online images. By analyzing 15 geographies of contemporary violence, conflict, and displacement—ranging from Ukraine and South Sudan to the Darién Gap and Bangladesh—and considering the plurality of perspectives, from reporters and NGOs to celebrities and anonymous civilians (often victims), the analysis problematizes how social media is transforming the public’s relationship with humanitarianism. Based on information available online as of October 2024, students analysed over 7,000 images from 200 diverse social media accounts, covering institutional and anonymous sources, to compare official narratives with those of individual users. It questions whether digital imagery is creating a new phase of mediatization in the history of humanitarianism.

6.

APPROACHES TO INTERNATIONAL CONFLICTS

Approaches to International Conflicts is part of the core curriculum of the University of Copenhagen’s specialisation in Conflict Resolution and International Relations. It explores how conflicts are managed, mediated, and resolved. The goal is to provide students with deep knowledge and key competences to analyse international conflicts, understood broadly as anything from separatism, civil wars, terrorism, international controversies, status rivalry to diplomatic tensions. While the object of analysis is conflict, the class is not limited to the specific tradition of ‘conflict studies’, but has a strong component of other conflict-focused theories within disciplines including political science, geography, sociology, anthropology, and humanitarian studies. In its 2025 iteration, Approaches to International Conflicts will integrate a core focus on humanitarianism and design in relation to the resolution of international conflicts.