UT-410 Understanding crisis – a conceptual approach (Autumn 2025)

On completion of the course, the student should be able to:

• provide an overview of how crisis is theorised in interdisciplinary fields, and discuss how crisis is understood, problematised and analysed across time and space
• identify and outline key features of contemporary crises to global development, such as rising socio-economic inequalities, crisis of the economy, democracy and civic society, displacement and migration, pandemic events and climate change and environmental degradation
• identify and discuss interconnections between different types and scales of crises
• recognise and analyse how social and economic inequalities informed by gender, ethnicity, race and class can be affected by crises
• critically assess the politics, communication, and reality of crisis across different locations
• critically assess concepts and policies of sustainability, development and crisis
• use case-studies to explain how crises across global, regional, national and local scales have contextually specific consequences and responses

This course invites students to an advanced conceptual discussion about crisis. By building a strong theoretical foundation, the course prepares students to critically assess how contemporary crises affect groups and societies, how they are interconnected, and how they can be addressed. The course considers how crises can be conceptualised across time and space and invites the students to develop a deeper understanding of the multifaceted crises unfolding presently: rising socio-economic inequalities, crisis of the economy, democracy and civic society, displacement and migration, the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change and environmental degradation.

Discussing how different groups perceive and respond to crisis, as well as how sustainable development is challenged by crisis in different contexts will be a key aspect of the course. Through readings exploring empirical examples from different contexts and of different scales, the course prepares the students to recognise and analyse how crises can both exacerbate inequalities produced by social and economic processes and give rise to struggles with the potential to reconfigure such inequalities. The theoretical and empirical foundation developed through engagement with the readings also prepares students to critically assess how communication about crises reflects the politics and realities of critical situations.