We are happy to announce that the Fourth National Conference on Interdisciplinary Education (NIE) will take place on June 5, 2020, at Maastricht University.

The organising team now invites proposals for the theme Interdisciplinary Education as a Pathway to Global Citizenship. 

In an ever more complex and interconnected world, future generations will need to interact, work and live together with people from a wide variety of backgrounds and cultures. Moreover, in such a world, their actions and choices can have far-reaching consequences, affecting people all over the world for better or for worse. To successfully function in this context, one requires Global Citizenship skills. In recent years, more and more universities have made the fostering of skills like perspective taking, normative and change agent skills an explicit goal of the education they offer.

Many have argued that interdisciplinary education is an excellent way of cultivating global citizenship. The fourth National Interdisciplinary Education conference will bring together teachers, researchers and students to explore the relationship between interdisciplinary education and global citizenship. It will be an opportunity for educators to discuss a range of questions relating to this issue, such as:

  • What are global citizenship skills? Why are they important?
  • How can interdisciplinary education foster these skills?
  • Should this be a goal of interdisciplinary education?
  • What are some best practices on how to integrate global citizenship skills in interdisciplinary curricula?
  • What are the challenges in doing this and how can these be dealt with?
  • What are ways to assess global citizenship skills, or are there other ways to provide students with feedback on such skills?

While the conference focuses on global citizenship skills, we also welcome contributions on other issues of interest to interdisciplinary educators, such as, for example, assessing interdisciplinarity, understanding the role of interdisciplinary education in reaching the sustainable development goals, or  rethinking student – educator roles, and many more.

The conference will bring together educators from a wide range of interdisciplinary programs from across the Netherlands and Belgium, and offer traditional paper presentations, but also workshops, discussions and an opportunity to exhibit educational materials and practices. Anyone who has anything to share relating to this topic is welcome to submit a proposal to the organizing committee.

Please submit your proposals via https://maastrichtuniversity.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_elWLIZPRSLrX6jX by March 31st, 2020

Applicants will be informed if their proposal can be accommodated by April 20th, 2020. Please note that participants and attendees will be charged a registration fee.

The 2020 organising team:

Prof. Teun Dekker (Liberal Arts and Sciences, University College Maastricht), Dr. Herco Fonteijn (Faculty of Psychology and Neurosciences, Maastricht University), Dr. Karlijn Haagsman (Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University), Prof. Valentina Mazzucato (Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University), and Dr. Simone Schleper (Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University)