The Fourth National Conference on Interdisciplinary Education (NIE) will take place on Friday, June 3rd, 2022, at University College Maastricht – Maastricht University. During this conference, teachers, researchers and students will come together to share experiences, practices, expertise, and ideas related to interdisciplinarity in higher education.

The theme of the fourth NIE conference will be Interdisciplinary Education as a Pathway to Global Citizenship. 

Call for proposals

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?
-How can global citizenship skills be set in to foster an inclusive international classroom?

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. Anyone who has anything to share relating to these topics is welcome to submit a proposal to the organizing committee. Please submit a proposal for any of the following formats: a paper presentation, a workshop, a solution room (including questions), or something to exhibit such as posters, student work, artwork and the like. You can submit individually or in a group. Senior and early career academics as well as students and professionals from outside the academy may contribute.

Please submit your proposals via the online submission system by March 31st, 2022. The organizing committee will let applicants know if their proposal can be accommodated by April 22nd, 2022.

The conference team

Prof. Teun Dekker (University College Maastricht, Maastricht University)

Dr. Herco Fonteijn (Faculty of Psychology and Neurosciences, Maastricht University)

Prof. Valentina Mazzucato (Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University)

Dr. Elissaveta Radulova (Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University)