From natural disasters to climate change, migration, and terrorist attacks, the world around us is constantly changing from unpredictable events outside of our control. Disasters not only have far-reaching consequences for the built environment, economies, nature and government institutions, but also for individual security. Climate change exacerbates the number and severity of disastrous events happening around the world and each year more people migrate either within countries or to other parts of the world in order to adapt. The urgency of these situations has led to increased pressure on political institutions, polarization, and critical debates within the European Union.

During this half-year multidisciplinary minor programme, you will gain a comprehensive overview of the most pertinent events affecting nature and society and acquire the skills to effectively respond as a resilient professional. This minor invites you to analyze complex challenges and provide sustainable solutions for (inter)national disaster contexts. You have the opportunity to develop into a leader in (disaster) risk and resilience within your own professional background and learn through experiments, simulations, projects, field trips, lectures, and literature.

Workfield Partners

Many industry partners contribute to this programme with workshops, excursions, and lectures. This will allow you to understand the profound complexity of disruptive events and their potential impact in the future. Some of our programme partners include:

• Regional Safety Service of Brabant
• Eindhoven University of Technology
• Delft University of Technology
• Red Cross
• Cordaid
• Care4Calais
• University Medical Center Utrecht

Programme Structure

This minor programme is divided into two modules comprising of several courses for a total of 30 ECTS. Over the course of the two modules, you will gain a deeper understanding of events that have a disruptive impact on society and how to respond to them as a resilient professional. The first module provides students with a comprehensive background on disaster resilience and in the second, they have the choice to narrow their focus to either migration or climate change issues. Both modules consist of courses designed to provide students with a comprehensive perspective on disaster resilience within migration and climate change issues.

Track (Inter)national Disaster, Resilience, and Migration

The first module, Disaster Risk Reduction, prepares you to dive more deeply into some of the most complex issues facing the world today. You will learn how to respond to natural disasters, aiming to reduce their impact in both a developing and Western context. You will also learn to work with innovative tools and design in order to test and evaluate solutions in real life cases.

During the second module, in the migration track, you dive more deeply into one of the main issues that has caused disruption in Europe in recent years: migration. Courses are focused on governance & policy, radicalization & terrorism and ethics. Part of this module are two field trips abroad where you conduct participative research. Previous trips have included Athens, Greece; Calais, France; Palermo, Italy; and Bosnia & Herzegovina.

At the end of the module, you will be able to critically analyse migration policy from multiple lenses, relying on different theoretical perspectives and drawing from their own experiences. This will translate into a deeper understanding of personal resilience in a professional context.

See our magazines: Magazine Covid edition (2021), Magazine field trip Bosnia (2020), Magazine field trip Palermo (2018), Magazine field trip Lesbos (2017).

• Introduction to Climate Change and Migration Issues (3)
• Crisis Response Coordination (5)
• System Thinking in Disaster Resilience (4)
• Public Health Risks (2)
• Study trip (1)

• Exploring Migration in the field (6)
• Understanding Migration Dynamics, Governance and Policy  (3)
• Ethics in Disruptive Events (3)
• Preventing, Detecting, and Responding to Violent Extremism (3)

Objectives

• You’ll gain the multidisciplinary background, methods and perspectives needed to design and manage integrated resilience strategies
• You’ll align specific competencies related to resilience to real world complexity and practices
• You’ll be equipped with tools for environmental monitoring and spatial analysis and you’ll be able to showcase the relevance for organizations / governments
• You’ll learn effective ways to engage and communicate with stakeholders and move toward the common goal of solving multidisciplinary problems
• You’ll be prepared as a future professional with the capacity to address the complexities of disaster resilience

• 120 ECTS points or equivalent (approximately 2 years of study) at the Bachelor level or higher (including propaedeutic diploma, exceptions will be reviewed by the minor coordinator)
• You should be able to follow classes, present and submit your work in English and be able to work in an international group of students/researchers

The target students to be involved in this program are mainly environmental science students, planners, architects, civil engineers, social scientists, communication experts, political scientists, engineers and geographers. However, the program does not exclude you if you have another specialisation.

• This is a fulltime programme from August - February

To be announced in course manual.

This minor programme is hosted by the School of the Sustainable Built Environment (ADGO) in collaboration with the School of Management, Public Administration and Finance (AMBF) and the School of Life Sciences and Technology (ALST). 

Therefore, the minor is formally part of the bachelor programme “Bouwkunde Den Bosch (BOU-H)”. You will need this information to apply (Studielink).

Location: Tilburg.

Minimum number of participants: 16.

Language: this programme is fully in English.

Contact
For more information, please contact the programme coordinators: Julia Moore and Sandra Snel, DisruptiveEvents@avans.nl.