International Joint Master in Sustainable Territorial Development - STeDe. STeDe is a two-years Master Degree course training researchers and professionals to support organizations acting in the territory and to draft sustainable development policies for economic, social, environmental, international and intercultural management. Partner Universities are: University of Padua, KU Leuven University, Paris1 Pantheon-Sorbonne.
Author: Massimo De Marchi, University of Padua. See contributors page
The course “Alternatives to development and territorial practices of post development”, implemented within the STeDe Master, focuses on the long reflections and debates on alternatives to development. Students firstly enter in contact with reflections on the crisis and critics of development coming from different geographical and cultural contexts. In parallel, the course offers a comparative reflection between universalizing reformist solutions embodied in many sustainability discourses, and transformative initiatives starting from different relations between society and nature to build a multiplicity of worlds.
During the course students work in groups (both physically and online) to prepare a sort of travel guide using the approach of Isolario (Book of Islands) to present case studies of post-development practices. Students prepare videos or story maps using ArcGIS StoryMaps. This digital tool allows students to integrate geographical and temporal components in the building of innovative narratives using maps, pictures, video, texts.
Thanks to this activity, students can collaborate in a virtual setting, comparing different perspectives (our Master students come from many different countries) and they can imagine, but also concretely design, new worlds. In addition, the result of their work is published online and can therefore be of inspiration to other students, as well as being used as a means of disseminating the master's activities or to build a personal portfolio of skills that can be used in the world of work.
All the STeDe students works are published at the following links:
