Sustainable Futures

This course is designed to equip students with the knowledge and skills needed to navigate the complex challenges of climate adaptation in a rapidly changing world. Students gain an understanding of climate hazards and adaptation processes, relevant to managing current and future climate risks.

The course explores the development of global and multi-level adaptation governance frameworks, including institutions, stakeholder engagement, and climate finance. Using a multidisciplinary, case-based approach, students examine adaptation across different sectors. Through critical analysis of academic and grey literature, students apply adaptation governance concepts to real-world case studies and synthesize their findings in a policy brief.

This course aims to equip students with the tools and knowledge to critically examine ideas and definitions of sustainability as well as speculations about the future. The course covers theories, historical discourses, and practices around the notions of sustainability and futures.

This course is designed to guide the students in the initial phase of their research journey. The course will equip the students with skills on research design and analysis, namely: 1) background, review the literature formulating a meaningful rationale for their research, 2) research formulation, development of appropriate research question(s) and project objectives; 3) methodology, methods and approaches to collect and answer the research question and obtain a tailored training in order to concretely apply it during the field work for their thesis, 4) project outcomes and expectations, alignment across research phases, roles of positionality, scope and uncertainty in the research process and outcomes.

From the moment of our births, or possibly even before, we are assigned a label of 'boy' or 'girl', and our assigned genders permeate every aspect of our lives from thereon in, from the clothes that we wear, to the toys that we play with, and the behaviours that are deemed 'appropriate'. Although increasingly the deterministic and dualistic model of gender is coming under scrutiny, gender continues to permeate most – if not all – of our interactions in the public and private spheres. Gender and sexuality always intersect with other social power systems – including but not limited to race, class, ethnicity, religion, age, ability, nationality, etc. – such that no one person experiences gender in precisely the same way as anyone else. Further, as gender informs all of the ways in which our bodies move through and interact with our spaces, it must be understood as being central to the discussions regarding the most pressing issues of our times, including climate and sustainability.

Contemporary security issues are intrinsically linked to technological development, as advancements in fields such as machine learning and drone technology can create new opportunities but also new security risks for our interconnected societies. This course introduces contemporary theories, actors and processes in the field of global technology governance, focusing on the responsible governance of and through technology. Participants will further develop their knowledge of key topics at the intersection of technical innovation and social impact through a critical reading of contemporary academic work, combined with guest lectures and case studies, for example on energy security and the societal impacts of artificial intelligence. The course utilizes instruction methods that stimulate active learning, combining insights from political science, security studies, computer science, ethics, and sustainability science. The key focus rests on the capacity to apply this knowledge to navigate rapidly emerging and potentially disruptive technological change in our interconnected societies.

Growing geopolitical tensions and a rise in international conflicts have made security a core governance challenge for the 21st century. Yet, security is more than national defense or public order. It is also locally embedded through institutional structures, societal organization, and lived experiences. This multi-dimensional nature of security requires a governance approach that cuts across geographical boundaries and policy areas, and one that takes into account the different public organizations and stakeholder groups that operate at these intersections.

In this course, we interrogate what constitutes a security issue from a political and policy perspective, and we study under which political, economic or social conditions these issues emerge. We will explore how security architectures at different levels (e.g. local, regional, national, global) have emerged and evolved over time. Students will employ different theories of governance to interrogate the linkages between security and other policy areas (e.g. economic, climate, technological), the possibilities for coordination within and across policy levels, and the involvement of stakeholders during different stages of the policy cycle. During the course, students will practice with hands-on skills such as writing a policy brief or carrying out a stakeholder analysis.

This course examines the human experience of migration through ethnographic research, that is, through descriptions of the cultural and social dimensions of people's lives as understood through immersive, in situ fieldwork. We approach migration not simply as movement across or within borders, but as a social process that reshapes families, labor, states, and infrastructures, always in response to specific cultural contexts. The course asks how migration is experienced and governed, how it is enabled and restricted, and how it becomes morally and politically contested in different settings. Students engage with classic and contemporary ethnographic writing about migration alongside theoretical works and journalistic accounts.

Tourism is one of the largest industries worldwide. During this course we analyze the modern culture of tourism through classic theories and key concepts, discussing questions such as why people travel, and what being a tourist exactly means. Critically, we will also examine the ways in which our tourism pathways and practices replicate and reinforce colonized ways of knowing and being in the world. How do we reconcile tourism in the 21st century with the ways in which it is embedded within colonial narratives? How do we work towards a tourism future that is just and emancipatory, rather than exploitative and Othering? We connect the classic theories and core concepts to state of the art research in the fields of tourism, mobility studies, and decolonization praxis, discussing specific cases involving Indigenous, ethnic and minority tourism; dark tourism; media tourism; and arts, festivals and creative tourism. Students will explore the theories and concepts offered through their own qualitative research project, reflecting on what tourism experiences means in current socio-cultural practices.

New security challenges require local communities to be able to adapt to changing circumstances, both rapidly and over the longer term. From a governance perspective, the need for adaptation requires the ability to anticipate, respond and manage security threats - abilities that many local public administrations find complicated. Adaptive governance also requires a deep understanding of how issues of preparedness and resilience are rooted in the social structures of the local communities that policymakers serve. For instance, citizens in neighborhoods with higher social cohesion might be better equipped to help each other in times of crisis. Yet, such societal resources are not a given and need to be actively supported by government policies and institutions that support strong communities.

In this course, we will explore how successful adaptive governance not only creates, but also depends on existing social ties and societal resources for security. Central to the course is a decentralized governance perspective that focuses on topics such as social networks, community leadership and organizational learning. First, we interrogate the social, economic and political features that make a local community prepared or resilient. Second, we analyse the societal and institutional frameworks (e.g. social networks, public services) that either strengthen or weaken communities. Third, we explore how public and private organizations can design and implement such frameworks, both from a more short-term perspective of crisis management and from the perspective of long-term capacity-building. Working closely with local policymakers and stakeholders, this course is developed to provide students with skills for prevention and adaptation, such as the management of public spaces, public-private collaboration and social initiatives.

The course explores profound connections between the past, present, and future within globalizing societies impacted by cultural and environmental changes. As a core course of the SF programme, this course is centred around critical exploration of heritage and its relation to the creation and upholding of identity/identities. It reflects on both within the context of increasingly globalizing societies, where cultural processes have undergone remarkable changes. Regional culture and identity are now pivotal tools for creating social cohesion in an increasingly individualistic and networked world. Moreover, these tools allow exploring environmental changes in the past, modes of adaptation and transformation, and a context for exploring and imagining sustainable futures. The notion of heritage involves both preserving the past and understanding its transformative value for the future. Using critical approaches, students will explore key texts and concepts to understand the relationship between cultural heritage and identity, and apply them to topics such as tourism and climate change.

This course critically engages with the concept of democratic resilience. It begins by analysing the construction of perceived democratic threats, such as societal polarization, disinformation, the rise of populism, and autocratic turns. Students examine key concepts, including democratic backsliding and democratic erosion, which capture the fear that democratic principles and practices are gradually undermined.

In a second step, the course turns to strategies aimed at strengthening democracy. We engage with debates on democratic self-defence and militant democracy, which advocate, for example, banning extremist parties, and raise the fundamental question of how democracies can defend themselves without undermining their own principles.

Alongside these approaches, we explore alternative strategies grounded in citizen participation. In particular, the course examines pathways to restoring space for pluralism and engaging productively with disagreement and conflict. One such pathway is democratic innovation—new institutional and participatory mechanisms that seek to involve citizens more directly in political decision-making.

Drawing on experiential learning, the course immerses students in collective decision-making processes within polarized contexts. Students develop practical skills to assess and design democratic processes under conditions of conflict and time pressure.

Nature based solutions (NBS), are ways of working with natural systems to protect, sustainably manage and restore ecosystems for water, climate change, biodiversity and livelihoods. In this course, you will gain an understanding of the concept, types and applications of NBS with the aim of providing frameworks and skills for its application in the context of future thinking and transformative change.

Sustainability Impact Assessment (SIA) is a systematic approach for evaluating the potential and actual impacts of policies, projects, programs, and plans across the environmental, social, and economic dimensions of sustainability. SIA plays a key role in fostering sustainable and equitable development by identifying multi-dimensional impacts, informing decision-making, and supporting the fair distribution of benefits and risks among stakeholders. This interdisciplinary course equips students with both theoretical foundations and practical skills in SIA. Students will develop a critical understanding of key SIA concepts, principles, and frameworks, and learn to analyze sustainability challenges using interdisciplinary perspectives. The course emphasizes ethical considerations and social justice. Students will learn to assess power dynamics, equity issues, and stakeholder interests, and to apply participatory and ethically grounded approaches to impact assessment. Topics covered include systems thinking, stakeholder and participatory theories, qualitative and quantitative data collection methods, baseline studies, impact management, climate policy impacts, just transitions, displacement and adaptation, and integrated environmental–economic assessments.

The Master Thesis is carried out individually. Research is performed under the supervision of a teacher and has to connect to current projects of the Campus Fryslân Research Institute. The topic of the Master Thesis needs to be clearly embedded in the topics of Sustainable Futures.