We’re excited to announce the start of our masters program this year and welcome our new group of students for the 2015-16 term!

The program will kick off once again under the leadership of our co-directors Carmen Mendoza and Sandra Bestraten, who specialize and have extensive experience in urban planning, housing, sustainable development, cooperation, developing contexts and social participation.

The students that participate in this course demonstrate their personal commitment with social justice in the world. We hope to meet their expectations, offering the knowledge and tools to help strengthen that commitment and integrating their work in human settlement projects. – Co-directors Carmen Mendoza and Sandra Bestraten

Here are this year’s highlights:

New faculty members – Our prestigious faculty, which includes returning professors such as African geopolitics and humanitarian assistance expert Gonzalo Sánchez-Terán, Nabeel Hamdi (Oxford Brookes University), Sergio Palleroni (Portland State University) and Reena Tiwari (Curtin University), also welcomes new member Alejandro de Castro from Columbia University’s GSAPP and coordinator of its Latin Lab.


IFRC course
– Last year we launched our first three-week 6-credit course on humanitarian shelter and settlements for posts-conflict and post-disaster situations, after securing an  agreement between the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Society (IFRC) and our university, UIC. The IFRC-approved course, which forms part of our curriculum but can also be taken as a stand-alone workshop, trains students with the protocols and expertise of IFRC as the main international organization in post-disaster situations, as well as the expertise of The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in post-conflict situations. Professors include seasoned professionals from organizations like IFRC, AECID and Médicos sin Fronteras. This year the course will take place from the 5th to the 23rd of October 2015 at UIC.


RMIT & UIC Symposium
– In collaboration with our university, RMIT University will be hosting a symposium to launch their new Master of Disaster, Design and Development, which will include a module from our masters program. The event will take place in late November and will feature an exciting roster of keynote speakers from the field of development and design. Stay tuned for details!

 

Consortium workshop – We are proud to host, once again, the consortium workshop, which will bring together students from the four  universities of the Mundus Urbano consortium–Technische Universität Darmstadt (Germany), Université Pierre Mendès Grenoble (France), Universitá Tor Vergata Rome (Italy), and our own Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (Barcelona)–for a joint urban action and workshop. In groups, students will develop intervention proposals and deliver a joint presentation and urban action in response to a local workshop that we will announce in the coming weeks.

Field trip – This year our field trip will be to India to work on a project with Reena Tiwari and her Curtin University students. More details coming soon.

Here’s to a great 2015-16 course!

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