The School of Global Affairs (SGA) at AUD focuses on emerging processes and issues that have the potential to impact life on the planet in fundamental ways. These ‘frontier’ concerns, given their uncertain and fast-evolving nature, call upon academic institutions to develop equally comprehensive methods of engagement. These concerns include global warming and environmental change, global health and well-being, urbanisation, conflict and security, technological capture, global commodity flows and their regulation, and the new media landscape. Each of these is critical to the shape of the world to come, and requires thought and considered action. The proposed School aims to amalgamate and organise these efforts at AUD with the goal of enabling cross-disciplinary conversations and collaborations.
Key areas of focus of the school are Geopolitics and Geo-economics; Global Environmental Change; Urbanisation;Health and Disease;Science, Technology and Society; Migration and Diaspora; Religion and Secularism; Global and Literary Humanities. All the thematics delineated above are dealt with through a global, interdisciplinary and practice-oriented perspective. The effort is to develop a global perspective given the connections that constitute these frontier issues. The focus of the School is to build capacities to understand the fast changing world and find creative and novel ideas related to seemingly intractable problems. The School brings together an exciting diversity of disciplines and trans-disciplinary fields to critically study and develop just, sustainable and inclusive alternatives through teaching, research and engagement with civil society.
The mission of the School is to equip the future generation of social actors including those in the public, private, and non-governmental sector, with the intellectual and professional tools to work in a challenging and dynamic environment. One of the truly distinctive features of our time is how many young people occupy positions of power and influence. The School offers programmes for students who seek extra-national careers that require a global perspective, as well as those who want to learn about the ways situated problems are strongly influenced by wider forces. Students will gain an appreciation of the ways in which global affairs structure our world, as well as how creative ways forward may emanate from many different parts of the world.
The School currently offers programmes in the following areas:
The School has plans to start postgraduate programmesin Public Policy &Governance, Public Health, and Science& Technology Studies. The School also has plans to start research programmes as well as short-term programs of 3 to 6 months duration in select thematic areas.
