This is an external online course offered by Oxford Brookes University, UK. Additional costs are involved not included in RMIT tuition fees.
The course deals with the major global concern of sudden crises in urban spaces caused by various phenomena such as natural disasters, conflicts arising from social and economic discontent, bad governance, and terrorism. You will learn to understand that whatever the causes and whichever form crises take, populations suffer serious damage – physically, spatially, socially, psychologically or symbolically. Given that with rampant urbanisation new forms of vulnerabilities have appeared, forcing people to increasingly settle in unstable, dangerous, extreme, or fragile environments, you will understand that focussing on urban spaces becomes increasingly important for the efficiency of humanitarian actions.
Of specific emphasis in the course is how conflicts impact the way people produce, understand, and inhabit spaces and places. During a conflict or in the case of imposed displacement, forced migrants, fighters, or the civilian population are forced to rebuild socialised spaces either in areas void of any a priori social significance such as camps, or areas from which they feel excluded. Understanding such a context, you will gain knowledge on rebuilding social links and re-inscribing solidarities in meaningful spaces in a way that makes collective life possible again. You will learn about specific tools for developing humanitarian programmes in urban environments and about action research methods to develop specific issues related to urban settings and specificities of humanitarian projects.