Co-taught by Virginia Tassinari (TU Delft) and Eduardo Staszowski (Parsons), in collaboration with TU Delft, the 4TU and Parsons, the New School.
This course is a deep dive in contemporary thinking and practices facing the challenges, and can be considered an experimental laboratory for envisioning forms of critical praxis beyond the modern, anthropocentric, Westerncentric and pathriarchal epistemolgical framework. As such, it can be considered an exercise of collaborative critical imagination, where to envision what our practices and theory can look like, when they emancipate from the current modern, anthropocentric, Westerncentric and pathriarchal epistemolgical framework. This requires an integrative approach to acting and thinking, that goes beyond the modern divide between theory and practice, but also between disciplines.
Critical praxis is a way of reflective interplay of thought with action and theory with practice. It consists of multiple forms in education and social change such as self-reflection, reflective action, and collaborative reflective practice.
What does it mean to explore a critical praxis in times of fear and uncertainty? How do we shape new transdisciplinary models which attempt to think what-is and what-could-be not in terms of a struggle between irreconcilable moments—“theory” and “practice”—but in terms of what lies, relationally between? The course will look at these questions as means of overcoming this gap and opening up other possibilities of thinking and acting in the world.
We see this course as a dialogue between students, faculty and external guests. Classes are structured around a series of readings, discussions and experiments engaging with key issues from contemporary philosophy, sociology and anthropology stressing where those discourses interplay with those currently developed through design, social, and artistic practices. Rather than a traditional lecture-based course model, we wish classes to offer students useful prompts, and a helpful arena, to share experiences, reflect on concepts and debate their applicability. On this basis our course follows two modes of learning:
One that engages with theoretical perspectives and discusses their potential.
Another that explores the curation and creation of artifacts, texts, performances, films, media productions, etc. prompting those theoretical insights and what they might mean for our times.
This course is meant to support giving shape to your own critical, reflective practice, cutting between disciplines, especially in dealing with our contemporary dark times and its future challenges. Fields of science such as philosophy, anthropology, sociology, gender studies and design studies provide critical insights central to the contemporary issues raised in for instance the more-than-human, the de-colonial and the feminist discourse. The course helps you to evaluate their potential value within your own research, and making these insights sharper/more critical and reflective.
Practical information
Fridays, 16:55 - 15:45
21/1/2026 - 12/5/20226
Online course
Contact person: Virginia Tassinari v.tassinari@tudelft.nl
Submissions
Submissions are open until January 9th, 2026