This course offers a transformative journey into embodied resistance and collective healing. Drawing on Sufi whirling, somatic release, and indigenous Palestinian practices, Ashira will teach the trauma-informed modality she developed under siege and exile. Participants will explore how continuous trauma shapes the nervous system and how the body can be a site of both memory and liberation.

Meet the Instructor: Ashira Darwish is a Palestinian-Egyptian trauma therapist, journalist, and founder of Catharsis Holistic Healing and Ashira Active Meditation. She is a certified EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) practitioner, Reiki master, Neurolanguage Programming (NLP) practitioner, and a Kundalini teacher. Her work bridges ancestral wisdom, embodied healing, and liberation psychology. With over a decade of experience leading trauma retreats in Palestine, USA, Canada and Latin America, she integrates Sufi whirling, somatic therapy, and cultural practices to support communities affected by colonization, displacement, and intergenerational trauma.

This course closely investigates the classroom as a space, its relationship to pedagogy and the power structures it reinforces or disrupts. How can classrooms be designed and undesigned according to the egalitarian principles of radical pedagogy? How can we create spaces that truly respond to the knowledge and experiences of their users?

Meet the Instructor: Saja Amro is an architect, educator, and designer based between The Netherlands and Palestine. Her work investigates the influence of spatial design on social dynamics in education. In her practice, she disrupts traditional classroom structures, aiming to rebuild them on the principles of radical pedagogy. As a tutor at the Architecture Department of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Saja uses the classroom as a place to collaborate with her students and reimagine spaces inspired by popular education methodologies, and roots of indigenous cultures.

This course is an invitation to imagine and build equitable, liberatory futures – starting with ourselves. Through a unique framework that spans four concentric circles – Self, Community, Work, and Society, we explore how personal transformation can lead to systemic change. Rooted in decolonial, Indigenous, and community-based knowledge systems, the course invites learners to critically examine their positionality, power, and purpose in today’s world.

Meet the Instructor: Hanieh Khosroshahi is an independent design consultant, researcher, and community organizer working in pursuit of people and the planet. Hanieh was born in Iran and grew up in Tkaronto on Turtle Island, both of which shaped her commitment to gender equality, collective liberation, and social justice. For the past decade, Hanieh has applied the principles and methods of human-centred design, participatory research, and systems thinking to design and scale products, services, and programs across health, gender, and climate. She holds a Master of Science in Human-Computer Interaction from the University of York in the UK.

In this class, we unpack racial trauma, explore our identities, and find our voices in a world that often wants to silence us. We retrace history to understand how modern society upholds white supremacy and causes extensive harm to BIPOC communities. Using that knowledge, we consciously move away from white models of success, learn how to become more comfortable with our identities, and re-design our life based on the values that matter most to us. We will also learn how to leverage our power, and organize in community to usher in the systemic change we need. 

Meet the Instructors: Sarah Seraj, Ph.D. is an outspoken psychologist, data-driven DEI Advisor,  and the co-founder & Chief Technology Officer of A Better Force. Combining her expertise in psychology and data science with her lived experience as a woman of color and an immigrant, she aims to create more inclusive spaces for women, BIPOC, and other underrepresented groups by addressing systemic inequalities within organizations.

Saamiya Seraj, Ph.D. is a fierce BIPOC coach and consultant, creating anti-oppressive workplaces and communities, through her role as the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of A Better Force (ABF),  a leadership development organization. With a background in engineering, organizational development, and equity advocacy, Saamiya brings a systems-thinking approach to building more inclusive and empowering workspaces.

This is a course about what it means to be an “expert” in an information age where everyone from TikTok influencers to AI claim expertise on a wide range of complex issues affecting our daily lives. Using a people-centered, anthropological approach, this course explores this question in two parts. We begin by examining how different communities define expertise in a myriad of ways–from Indigenous healers in the Amazon to Sufi nuclear scientists. I will introduce students to the concept of “hierarchies of expertise,” which have emerged out of overlapping systems of domination and oppression. In the second part of the course, we explore why the category of expert has become so suspect at a time when information seems so readily available to ordinary people. Do we even need experts anymore? We will explore this question by studying specific case studies. 

Meet the Instructor: Dr. Negar Razavi is a political anthropologist, whose work examines the intersections of state power, empire, security, foreign policy, expertise, and gender. Razavi is currently an Associate Research Associate Research Scholar at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies at Princeton University, where she is working on her first book manuscript on the role of policy experts in shaping U.S. security policies toward the Middle East generally and Iran specifically. She is also a Senior Researcher at Security in Context.

This course invites participants to embrace a more conscious and intentional way of living, grounded in sustainability, simplicity, and care for the Earth. Drawing from the zero-waste movement, indigenous wisdom, and behavioral psychology, participants will explore practical strategies to reduce environmental impact, shift daily habits, and foster deeper connections with the natural world. From slow living and chemical-free practices to effective environmental storytelling, the course offers tools to reimagine our relationship with land, community, and self—nurturing a lifestyle rooted in awareness, creativity, and collective well-being.

Meet the Instructor: Najla Abdellatif is a Swedish-Palestinian environmental advocate and founder of Zero Waste Palestine, a platform that inspires individuals across the Arab world to embrace mindful, waste-free living. With a background in Business and Economics, and advanced studies in Peace and Conflict, Environmental Psychology, Sustainability, and Environmental Leadership, she brings a rich interdisciplinary lens to her work. Through workshops, storytelling, and community engagement, Najla empowers people to reconnect with the natural world and live with greater intention. Her approach to environmental work centers joy, cultural wisdom, and collective empowerment as essential pathways to environmental justice.

What happens when doing good no longer feels good? This course is a deeply personal journey into the ethical and moral dilemmas of working in international development, as seen through nearly three decades of experience in Pakistan. Using my widely shared blog series Why I Left Development as a foundation, we’ll explore the contradictions, questions, and discomforts that arise when good intentions collide with global systems of power.

Meet the Instructor: Themrise Khan is an independent development professional and researcher with almost 30 years of practitioner and policy-based experience in international development, aid effectiveness, gender, and global migration. She has worked with a vast spectrum of multilateral and bilateral organizations, INGOs and civil society organizations primarily in Pakistan, Canada and globally. She is co-editor of the book White Saviorism in International Development. Theories, Practices and Lived Experiences and she blogs, speaks and writes actively on notions of national autonomy, North-South power imbalances in development and humanitarianism, race relations and immigrant citizenship and integration and migrant and refugee rights.

This course explores the evolving relationship between human imagination and machine-generated creativity in the age of artificial intelligence. Starting with a psychological and philosophical grounding in human creativity and imagination, students will journey through the aesthetic, ethical, and labor dimensions of AI's impact on the creative process. Weekly sessions blend theory, reflections, discussions, and some hands-on experimentation with AI tools is explored later in the course.

Meet the Instructor: Mayra Ruiz-McPherson, PhD(c), MA, MFA is a technology ethicist and qualitative futurist focused on affective computing, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, humanoid robotics, and the expanding world of human-and-machine relationships. In addition to her human-computer interaction (HCI) studies, Mayra is also a visual artist who holds an Illustration MFA and possesses 30 years of immersive brand design, creative strategy, and marketing technology experience.

Economics isn’t just for elites in ivory towers. Each one of us needs to understand capitalism if we want to lead more fulfilling and liberated lives. Our global economic system doesn’t just affect our  finances. It shapes our personal lives on the most intimate level – down to our identities, our health and our emotional wellbeing, and even our closest relationships, the ways we love. In Capitalism vs Love, participants will learn exactly what capitalism is and how it works – in a way that is accessible and fun. They will analyse how our economic system affects their own personal lives. And they will create their own personal vision for a new economy that lifts them up and helps them thrive.

Meet the Instructor: Dr. Laura Basu is an academic and writer. She is a Visiting Fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London, and openDemocracy’s former economics editor. She was an inaugural Rhizome Fellow with Culture Hack Labs in 2022 and has held a Marie Curie award to study global economic crisis and the role of the media. She is on the advisory board for the book series Alternatives to Capitalism in the 21st Century and is currently writing a book on ‘Loveconomics’.