This course is primarily concerned with challenging narrow disciplinary thinking about the role of different knowledges, cultures and lifeworlds in development, planning, security and disaster management discourses and practices.

It aims to nurture the practice of deep reflexivity and critical thinking as transformative modes of inquiry and learning; understanding that the nature of the intercultural discourse is, at its core, ideological, epistemological and political. However, identifying a difference of 'perspective' is much more complex than it may appear. The course explores reciprocal dialogue and meaning produced by relations between ways of knowing, cultural processes, people and places. It draws insights from deep ecology, decolonial theory, sensuous philosophies, literary and critical theory, performance, theories of marginality and difference, landscape urbanism, political?ecology, environmental?justice, and diverse ontologies and cosmologies on human and more-than-human relationships.??

In this course you will critically examine a wide range of readings, case studies, and visual material to think more broadly about the construction of plural, non-hierarchical, reciprocal and?enriching discourse, practice and action to address the complex local and global inter-cultural challenges.?The course will, most importantly, provide you with the practical insights and skills to engage reflexively about your own knowledge, positionalities and cultural histories and how these relate to your self-identity, your work/vocation and the engagement with the world around you.