International Development: Global Trends via Local Case Perspectives

About this course

Additional course information

• Forms of tuition and assessment

  Forms of tuition

  Onsite interactive lectures on campus in class, with guest lecturers, group work based on videos, real-life experience sharing, excursion and case study discussions.  Language of instruction: English

  Forms of assessment

  Students will choose one of the topics and prepare a group presentation. This final group presentation and discussion will take place during the last meetings and will serve as final assessment.

  This course is designed so that each of the learning goals listed is achieved through active participation in the course activities. 

  1. Group assessment: group assessments would be implemented during contact hours in the class. Students take one of the topic of the course and prepare a presentation on listed variants. They will receive the assignment in advance as well as the assessment form for the presentation. Groups will need to submit a one or two-pager on their chosen topic and idea for a go-ahead. Students also need to reflect on the work load and designated tasks within their group as part of the final assessment; 
  2.  Blog assignment in pairs (depending on the amount of participants): each pair should write a blog about 1 of the topics/lectures. A blog will be shared with all participants digitally. A table and schedule will be provided on the first day.  
     
     Goal:  
     - Encourage students to discover an innovative, captivating, and concise way to convey the central concepts of the lecture to an external audience  
     - To invite them to critically reflect and contribute to debates  
     Blog requirements:  
     - Should serve as a platform for you to express creativity or provoke thoughts regarding the main message of the lecture. There's no strict requirement to write; you may choose any format you prefer. Feel free to create a cartoon, craft a photo story, record a spoken column, or produce a video if that suits your style!  
     - Your blog should establish a connection between the lecture's content and something beyond the program, such as ongoing debates, personal anecdotes, multimedia content, exhibitions, or parliamentary discussions.  
     - Whenever possible, include website links as references. Keep your content concise and engaging.  
     - Additionally, ensure your blog includes an accompanying picture (at least 800x500 px) with a clear label for reuse and a relevant title.
     - Submit your blog via email no later than the next day’s lecture. Blogs will not be presented during class unless requested/required. A brief introduction and background is given by the creators and there will be a brief moment for Q&A and feedback. 
  3. Participants will do a debate during the first week. Each participant will be assigned a role. There will be an in-class individual assessment on the debate. Students will receive the criteria for this debate in advance.

  The group assignment and presentation are 50%, the Blog is 30%, the debate is 20% .

  To achieve a passing grade for the course, students will need to have the total average 5.5 or higher (according to the Dutch grading system).

  Attendance is mandatory.

• Learning objectives

  At the end of the course:

  • Participants understand the complexities and key trends and debates that have historically shaped the sector of international development cooperation;

  • Participants can recognize and critically reflect upon the concept of development and debate their position in international and global development practices;  

  • Participants are aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the SDGs;

  • Participants can identify different forms of power and describe how power relates to inequality and shapes processes of exclusion and inclusion;

  • Participants understand the importance and can apply insights of local perspectives in thinking about international development;

  • Participants can understand how to select and critically review the literature, extract key messages of different learning material (lecturers, literature) and share their insights via a blog with their peers.

  Furthermore, participants will learn and sharpen their skills regarding:  

  - Writing blogs;

  - Debating;

  - Public speaking;

  - Teamwork;

  - Literature review / contextualising.

• Preliminary syllabus

  Here you can download the preliminary course syllabus for summer 2024.

  ^{*Please note that it is a preliminary syllabus and that it might be subject to some change before the course starts.}

• About the course coordinators

  The course will be taught by the team of professionals lecturers and experts that worked on international projects in different countries with strong ties to presented case studies all over the world (focus on Global South countries). Each invited lecturer has academic (PhD and/or higher) and practical background, presenting concrete domain of her/his expertise.

  Dr Oleksandr Khyzhniak is a project manager at the Centre for International Cooperation (CIS-VU), has broad experience in international collaboration, management project education, and research, focusing on post-Soviet countries, China and Africa. He prefers to use interdisciplinary approaches and is open to international relations that grounds on his two MA degrees in Sociology and International Economics at Karazin University (Ukraine). During his academic research career, he did his internships in 2009 at Warszawa University (Poland) for the PhD devoted to tolerance issues and at Ariel University (Israel) in 2016-2017 for the post-doc project devoted to collective actions and its determination. During his work experience, he combined educational, research, and management activities. As a project manager at CIS-VU, now he focuses on the implementation of international projects in Global South countries and developing new fields and opportunities in Central Asia and East Neighbourhood countries.

  Jorn Dormans is working as a project manager at CIS-VU for nearly 6 years. He has a background in social and cultural anthropology and teaching. In the field of international cooperation, he is mostly working in the MENA region focusing on Education and SRHR related capacity sharing (building) projects. He has expertise in diversity issues, SRHR, Gender awareness, tailor-made training and teaching practices. He graduated at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU Amsterdam) for his master in Social and Cultural Anthropology. His research followed the discourses and experiences of (cultural) diversity within the VU. After that he continued with a second Master through the Advanced Master Programme in International Development (AMID) at Radboud University in Nijmegen. Jorn has a passion for education and taught for several years both in primary, secondary and special education and is currently focusing on Train the Trainer Approaches in various CIS-projects. Most of his working experience is in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Jordan and Lebanon. His projects often pay specific attention to refugees and host communities. At CIS his daily activities involve: project management, coordination and project reporting; acquisition and developing project proposals, providing training workshops M&E and policy development. In addition, Jorn is an advocate of using more inclusive and appropriate critical language with regards to ‘Development Cooperation’, gender, race, power, decolonisation, identity and disabilities and migration.
  

  Guest lecturers:

  Dr. Denyse J. Snelder,

  Dr. Henk van den Heuvel,

  Dr. Prosper S. Maguchu,

  Dr. Halyna Kravchenkova,

  Dr. Lilian Omondi