PolyUnderstanding: Polycrisis, Fragility & Resilience

CIVIS focus area: Society, culture, heritage
Field of studies: Art, Design and Media

Business and Management

Computer Science and IT

Engineering & Technology

Environment & Agriculture

Law

Medicine and Health

Natural Sciences and Mathematics

Social Science and humanities

Environmental sciences, Urbanism, Geography
Type: Blended Intensive Programmes (BIP)
Course dates: 4 May - 29 June 2026
Apply by: 30 October 2025 Apply now

The PolyUnderstanding BIP, forming part of the future Joint Master on the Polycrisis by PolyCIVIS, comprises a foundational learning offering on Polycrisis studies.

Bringing together an impressive line-up of more than 30 academic tutors from CIVIS Universities in Africa and Europe and world-class external experts from renowned international organizations, it takes stock of participatory, teamwork - and challenge-based pedagogies, games and COIL teaching, to delve into the mechanics of understanding what the polycrisis is, how it is triggered and keeps cascading across domains and geographies, how it relates to dimensions of fragility and how it can be countered through structural resilience.

Through an array of perspectives from crises in different domains, such as climate, environment, health, society, cities, migration, international security and development, coupled with crisis experiences and lessons learnt from Africa and Europe, and discussions for the interplay of the polycrisis with the digital transition, development aid, open government, humanitarian action, public-purpose innovation and other agendas, this BIP is addressed at doctoral, masters and advanced bachelor students from all CIVIS universities who want to understand robustly how to build resilience against the polycrisis in their own contexts, and form part of tomorrow's cohort of global awareness leaders and changemakers.

The BIP is offered during May-June 2026 in Athens, Greece and online, at a workload of 6 ECTS accredited to all successful attendees through active attendance and project assignments. It's a unique learning experience for forward-thinking, engaged students from across the disciplines, interested to see their own study contexts from a broader angle and explore the encounters of their learning and research paths with a global challenges perspective.

Main topics addressed

an epistemology of the polycrisis: meaning(s), dimensions, triggers, cascading mechanisms;
crises in domains across the SDGs: from climate, environment, health, society, cities, migration, all the way to international security and development;
crises in, and across, Africa and Europe;
unravelling fragility: meanings, dimensions, flavours, root causes and gordian knots;
assembling resilience: mechanisms driving from non-fragility to resilient development and wellbeing;
weaving resilience through the polycrisis: digital transition, development aid, open government, humanitarian action, public-purpose innovation and other fabrics.

Learning outcomes

understand in depth what the polycrisis is and how it arrives;
build awareness of crises in different domains and their interconnections;
understand how crises cascade across geographies;
gain an informed and holistic understanding of fragility;
identify structures, components and degrees of resilience;
develop a resilience view upon positive change agendas;
learn to apply polycrisis, fragility and resilience lenses on own fields of study.

_{*further information available in the attached files (which are under development into a full study guide)}

Dates: 4 May - 29 June 2026	Total workload: 177 hours
Format: Blended	ECTS: 6*
Location: Athens, Greece	Language: English (C1)
Contact: gouscos@media.uoa.gr

^{*recognition of ECTS depends on your home university}

Physical mobility

The physical section of the BIP will take place between 15-19 June 2026 in Athens, Greece. All the sessions will be held in the premises of the Dept. of Communication and Media Studies of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.

The gathering starts with an optional reception on Sunday, 14 June 2026 (6pm-8pm EEST) - for those students who can make it, without formal obligations. The Athens-based tutors will meet you on the spot, making sure all students have arrived and settled safely, and to finalize any practical arrangements (premises accessibility, wifi access, etc.)

The physical teaching week encompasses a series of 10 sessions for the physical teaching 5 days: one morning 4-hour session (9am-1pm EEST), and one afternoon 4-hour session (2pm-6pm EEST), with coffee breaks and a light-lunch break in-between, for each one of the 5 days.

Detailed schedule:

Monday, 15 June 2026, 9:00-13:00 & 14:00-18:00 EEST: Module B - What is the polycrisis, based on the CI & WITS approach
Tuesday, 16 June 2026, 9:00-13:00 & 14:00-18:00 EEST: Module C - Domain crises (spanning climate, environment, health, society, cities, migration, international security, development and others) and Continent crises (spanning Africa and Europe)
Wednesday, 17 June 2026, 9:00-13:00 & 14:00-18:00 EEST: Module C - Domain crises (spanning climate, environment, health, society, cities, migration, international security, development and others) and Continent crises (spanning Africa and Europe)
Thursday, 18 June 2026, 9:00-13:00 & 14:00-18:00 EEST: Module C - Domain crises (spanning climate, environment, health, society, cities, migration, international security, development and others) and Continent crises (spanning Africa and Europe)
Friday, 19 June 2026, 9:00-13:00 & 14:00-18:00 EEST: Module D - The Fragiles vs Resilients game

Virtual part

The virtual part will take place between 4 May - 29 June 2026. We will start with a virtual reception on Monday (13:00 - 16:00 CEST), by all tutors and students, to pre-meet, make the tour de table, make sure that all preparations are in place and present to students the PolyCIVIS podcasts and webinars on the Polycrisis as an introduction to the BIP’s topics.

This is followed by a series of 4-hour afternoon sessions (13:00 - 17:00 CEST), covering:

policies about the polycrisis;
research about the polycrisis;
fragility and the polycrisis: towards a poly-fragility concept;
resilience and the polycrisis: toward a poly-resilience concept;
topics on domain crises, on top of those covered in the physical teaching week;
topics on continent crises, on top of those covered in the physical teaching week.

These sessions are to be delivered by academic tutors, as well as accommodate expert speakers from international organizations, who will be invited to make interventions in lecture or panel formats followed by discussion with the BIP students.

The webinars will take place on:

Monday, 11 May 2026, 13:00 - 17:00 CEST
Wednesday, 13 May 2026, 13:00 - 17:00 CEST
Monday, 18 May 2026, 13:00 - 17:00 CEST
Wednesday, 20 May 2026, 13:00 - 17:00 CEST
Monday, 25 May 2026, 13:00 - 17:00 CEST
Wednesday, 27 May 2026, 13:00 - 17:00 CEST
Monday, 8 June 2026, 13:00 - 17:00 CEST
Wednesday, 10 June 2026, 13:00 - 17:00 CEST

Taken all together, these 8 virtual seminars are covering Module A of the BIP, on Fragility, Resilience, Domain and Continent Crises, Policies and Research, with the specific tutors and topics of each seminar to be announced.

The virtual part completes with student assignments to be presented orally in a final virtual session on Monday, 29 June 2026 10:00 -13:00 & 14:00 - 17:00 CEST and delivered by that date (10 days after completion of teaching).

Assessment

Students will be evaluated on the basis of 4 components :

Attendance - mandatory for all physical and virtual teaching activities - and substantive participation in physical and virtual activities, including organized discussions and exchanges on selected topics
Full compliance to respect for diversity, academic integrity and anti-plagiarism principles
Purposeful palling with peers during class interaction and project assignments
Individual/ small group (2-3 students) project assignments, on reflecting on the ways in which what has been presented in the BIP combines with their own research questions, linked to their own disciplinary and geographical perspectives, and delivering and presenting a written essay by a fixed hard deadline, at a length of 4,000 words for an individual essay, 8,000/ 12,000 words for an essay of 2/ 3 students, counting from introduction up to conclusions, with a ±10% margin, referencing the BIP sources in a substantive manner, in English, following APA style, with zero tolerance for plagiarism and AI writing.

Assignment topics will be determined by the PolyUnderstanding BIP scientific committee working together with participating students. They will be based on documented interdisciplinarity needs and scope of work and expected to have a balance between study-review work (approximately 70% of the final assignment’s workload) and work to formulate an open research question (approximately 30% of the final assignment’s workload).

The programme, forming part of the future Joint Master on the Polycrisis of the PolyCIVIS Network, is open to students at CIVIS member universities from all academic levels (last year of Bachelor studies, Master, PhD), with English fluency at least at a CEFR-C1 level.

Engaged and ambitious, willing to dedicate effort in this BIP and committed to taking stock of this unique experience of working with an impressive line-up of academic tutors and world-class external experts, through participatory, teamwork- and challenge-based pedagogies in person and online, to gain a deep understanding of the polycrisis, fragility and resilience nexus in an interdisciplinary and global context, connect this to their own studies, and achieve outstanding outcomes to form part of a cohort of tomorrow’s leaders and changemakers.

The skillset provided to successfully attending PolyUnderstanding BIP students comprises:

a robust conceptual understanding of the polycrisis phenomenon per se, and intertwingled with fragility and resilience;
the ability to productively reason about these notions and their interplay across crises, domains and geographies that transcend the students’ own context;
the critical and productive liaison of these notions to the students’ own study pathways.

Students must demonstrate in their applications an interest for opening up their knowledge into a polycrisis, fragility and resilience epistemology which transcends their own study domains and geographies, and substantively liaising this epistemology to their own studies.

Concerning the personal/ interpersonal academic work skills required, openness to teamwork and capacity to assimilate and reason about new knowledge are important.

This CIVIS course is a Blended Intensive Programme (BIP) - a new format of Erasmus+ mobility which combines online teaching with a short trip to another campus to learn alongside students and professors across Europe.

NB: Visiting Students - Erasmus Funding Eligibility

To be eligible for your selected CIVIS programme, you must be a fully enrolled student at your CIVIS home university at the time you will be undertaking the programme. This course is also open to students with the same academic profile, who are enrolled at a CIVIS strategic partner university in Africa. Please check here, if you can apply and this particular course is open to applications from your university. Successful applicants will receive an Erasmus+ grant covering travel and subsistence costs during their stay. Applicants should be willing to extend their stay at the host university for 1-3 weeks for additional research and/or training purposes.

Concurrently with the physical teaching week of the course taking place in Athens, we will try in a non-committing manner to organize COIL-based twin physical teaching weeks in Maputo, Mozambique and Johannesburg, South Africa, for local students who cannot make it to Athens. More information about this is provided in the attached files. Please note that, even if you fall in this category, you *need to apply* for the BIP, for your participation to be considered.

Professors

Dimitris Gouscos, Associate Professor, NKUA
Alessandra Battisti, Professor, SUR; topics on Urban Health
Juan Esteban Malo Arrazola, Professor, UAM; topics on Environment and Ecology
Delia-Laura Popescu, Lector Dr., UB; topics on Environment and Health
Malte Brosig, Professor, WITS; topics on Polycrisis
Ahmadou Aly Mbaye, Professor, UCAD; topics on Climate Change, Migration and Youth in Africa
Emilio Tostão, Professor, UEM; topics on Agriculture and food security
Fadma Ait-Mous, Professor, UH2C; topics on Social Issues
Manos Pikoulis, Professor, NKUA; topics on Health, Polycrisis and Humanitarian Aid
Constantinos Cartalis, Professor, NKUA; topics on Climate
Emmanuella Doussis, Professor, NKUA; topics on Climate Diplomacy
Panayotis Tsakonas, Professor, NKUA; topics on International Security
Antonis Metaxas, Associate Professor, NKUA; topics on European Governance
Ilias Plakokefalos, Assistant Professor, NKUA; topics on Public International Law
Efthymios Papastavridis, Assistant Professor, NKUA; topics on Sea Protection and Safety
Fátima Franco Múgica, Associate Professor, PhD, UAM; topics on Environment and Ecology
Mbayang Thiam, Researcher and Lecturer, UCAD; topics on Climate Change, Migration and Youth in Africa
Yifang Ban, Professor, KTH; topics on Resilient Development
Faith Mabera, Research Fellow, WITS; topics on Polycrisis
Aminata Mboup, Chargée de partenariat, UCAD; topics on Climate Change, Migration and Youth in Africa
Chrysafo Arvaniti, Community Engagement Senior Advisor, Médecins Sans Frontières; topics on Humanitarian Crisis and Community Empowerment
Petra Kežman, Senior Advisor, Union for the Mediterranean; topics on Polycrisis, Environmental and Cultural Diplomacy
Alessandro Bozzini, Policy Analyst, OECD Open Governance Unit; topics on Open Government and Civic Space
Nibal Idlebi, Senior Advisor, Independent (Former Director at UN-ESCWA); topics on Digital Transformation and Innovation Policies
Jonathan Marley, Policy Analyst, OECD; topics on Conflict, Crises and Fragility
Amandine Sabourin, Policy Analyst, ECDPM, Institute for European Studies; topics on Development Policy, Aid Effectiveness, Democratic Governance and Rule of Law
Andreas Pavlou, Lead for the Independent Reporting Mechanism, Open Government Partnership; topics on Access to Information, Anti-Corruption, Citizen Engagement and Participation
Evika Karamagioli, Research Fellow, NKUA, Fragiles vs Resilients Game
Elda Stoupa, Research Fellow, NKUA, Fragiles vs Resilients Game
Marina Tomara, Research Fellow, NKUA, Fragiles vs Resilients Game
Alexandra Nakou, Research Fellow, NKUA, Fragiles vs Resilients Game

Send your application by filling in the online application form by 30 October 2025, and also including:

CV
Motivation Letter
Research project outlines

Applications will be evaluated based on:

quality and interest of CV (max 4 points)
quality and interest of Motivation Letter (max 4 points)
quality and interest of Research project outlines (max 4 points)
effective demonstration of applicants’ interest for opening up their knowledge into a polycrisis, fragility and resilience epistemology which transcends their own study domains and geographies, and substantively liaising this epistemology to their own studies (max 4 points)

In case of the lowest-ranking applications gathering equal evaluation points, all corresponding applicants will be offered a place in the BIP.

Apply now

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