Kontroverskortlægning

Mapping Controversies at DTU in June

The Design Engineering programme at DTU will again this year be hosting a 3-week course in controversy mapping. We encourage a broad mix of students from as many institutions and disciplines as possible and we nurture a very collaborative and interdisciplinary atmosphere. No technical pre-requisites are necessary to take part in the course, but we do recommend that students hold a bachelor degree or similar. The 5 ECTS point course takes place full time between June 1st and June 22nd 2012 and covers a range of digital tools and methods for harvesting data online and visualizing it in various ways. All students produce a website with their results as part of their exam and the best projects will be submitted to the international mapping controversies archive connecting 22 similar courses world wide (http://controverses.sciences-po.fr/archiveindex/).

Controversies involving techno-scientific expertise are increasingly integral to democratic politics. As a consequence, the ability to act under conditions of uncertainty and in situations in which problems are multiple and no clear evidence-based guides are readily available is becoming more and more important. At the same time, the rise of the web-sphere and the availability of a rapidly expanding range of digital traces opens up new possibilities for mapping the ways in which different kinds of stakeholders and experts deploy around different matters of concern. Controversy mapping is about finding innovative ways to visualize these issue-scapes so that it becomes evident how hot problems in the public domain are framed and engaged by those who are affected by them.

This year students will have the opportunity to work with IDA (the Danish Engineering Association) in helping them map a variety of issues related to globalization and sustainable futures. This is an option, not a demand.
You can sign up for the course electronically (http://www.dtu.dk/Uddannelse/Gaestestuderende/Tilmeld/Tilmelding.aspx) between 1/5 and 15/5 (quote the course code 42632 Mapping Controversies) or you can contact Torben Elgaard Jensen (tej@man.dtu.dk) or Anders Kristian Munk (ankm@man.dtu.dk) for further info. You can also check out the course website (http://www.mappingcontroversies.dk/).