Spring Semester 2026

https://vorlesungsverzeichnis.unibas.ch/de/vorlesungsverzeichnis?id=299526

In today’s world, we face many complex societal challenges. Research projects addressing these challenges often involve actors and stakeholders from different fields and disciplines bringing together their own perspectives or knowledge on a topic. Accordingly, collaborative transdisciplinary approaches are crucial for the success of a project.
On this course, you’ll explore how to meet the challenges of conducting effective transdisciplinary research. You’ll gain insights into a variety of case studies from different fields as you learn from the experiences of peers and experts. As the course is open for participants all over the world (not only IGS North-South students), you will have the chance to exchange and learn with many other students, researchers, and practitioners.
The MOOC is divided into 6 weeks. Each week is dedicated to particular learning themes. These contain various activities (videos, articles, discussions, quiz) that you should complete within the week through self- study and exchange with other learners. You are free to choose the day and time where you go through the learning material. In addition, you will write an essay to apply the learnings to your PhD project and provide feedback to your peers essays.

The course will be mentored by td-net on following dates: 25 February 2026: 14:00-16:00 CET; 9 March 2026: 15:00-17:00 CET; 24 March 2026: 14:00-16:00 CET and 16 April 2026: 15:00-17:00 CET

Further information to the mentored groups: https://en.transdisciplinarity.ch/capacitiy-building/offers-td-net/td-mooc

Efforts to put an end to civil wars by negotiated means are highly unsuccessful with about only a quarter of them achieving an agreement, and half of those agreements having failed to be implemented. These figures pose a major challenge for researchers and practitioners interested in supporting peace making and peace building efforts in different contexts across the world.
The complexity of this situation is now increased due to global trends that question the pillars of what has been understood as peace negotiations.
By combining theoretical elements and international experiences, this course aims to develop in the students a conceptual framework for analyzing peace negotiations, in particular at the light of the trends in the field.
The first part of the course centers on the discussions that pay more attention to the right (ripe) moment for peace negotiations, whereas the second centers on the “how”, “what” and “why” of peace negotiations. The third part of the course addresses new trends and challenges in peace negotiations.

Teaching concept:
Blended learning, combining face-to-face lectures and group work, discussions, problem based peer learning and student presentations. A small group presentation on a selected topic of the course will be presented at the end of the lecture. A pass/fail mark will be given.

Content:
• History of Global health research during the colonial and post-colonial period (Henri Yéré)
• Western and non-Western paradigms and epistemics at the example of Maya medicine. (Monica Berger Gonzalez, Jakob Zinsstag, )
• Research partnership: The 11 KFPE principles (Bassirou Bonfoh, Fabian Kaeser (tbc))
• Internal and external project communication in a multilingual context (Kristina Pelikan)
• Introduction to Transdisciplinary, participatory approaches in research partnership (Jakob Zinsstag)
• Diversity, Equity and Gender in research partnership (N.N.)
• Conflict sensitive research (Said Abukhattab, Rea Tschopp)
• Spirituality and Health (N.N. M. Fries?, Jakob Zinsstag)
• Specifics of working in West- and Central Africa; East and Southern Africa, South East Asia, Latin America are always given by a native of the region and another expert.

Aim: The course introduces students into the fundamental knowledge and skills of international, multicultural and multilingual research partnership. It is aimed at students who plan to work in international research partnership but have no field experience yet. The course is also suitable for students who have first international research experience and would like to prepare for longer term engagement. Finally the course will also address issues about returning.

Teaching concept:
Blended learning, combining 2 week open online course (workload 3 hours per week) and 8 face-to-face lectures, discussions, role plays, problem based peer learning and student presentations. A seminar paper of 10 pages will be prepared individually and will be presented at the end of the lecture. A mark will be given for the oral (50%) and for the written paper (50%).

Content:
• Theoretical foundations of “One health” (Jakob Zinsstag)
• One health study design, integrated research planning and budgeting (Jakob Zinsstag)
• Towards a game theory of One Health (Alvar Bucher)
• Calculation of R0 in mutlihost transmission models (Nakul Chitnis)
• Parameter optimization in R (Jan Hattendorf)
• Integrated disease surveillance-response systems (Yahya Osman)
• The Palestinian One Health Initiative (Said Abukhattab)
• Ecology of the animal-human interface (Rea Tschopp)
• One Health, microbiomes and nutrition (Pascale Vonaesch)
• Dynamics, economics, environmental impact of livestock production systems in relation to of cross-species disease transmission (The students will work through a practical example of an animal-human transmission model and a cross-sector economic and environmental impact analysis). For 2023 the following topics are proposed.
Towards sustainable livestock production in Mongolia in relation to carbon balance and disease control.

The course integrates the MOOC on Transdicsiplinarity https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/partnering-for-change

The seminar provides theoretical and practical insight to “One Health”, from for advanced students in biology, veterinary and human medicine and related fields. At the end of the seminar, students are able to develop their own animal-human transmission models and “One Health” studies.

This seminar extends the lecture “Introduction to One Health” und responds to the demand of students to provide deeper insight and practical work on “One Health” Methods. It is provided by veterinary epidemiologists, a microbiologist, a mathematician and a biostatistician. The audience are advanced students and PhD candidates in the fields of epidemiology, biology, veterinary and human medicine and environmental impact. The Seminar is composed of lectures, self-study, discussions and practical seminar work.

This course examines the central political dilemmas surrounding migration in contemporary societies. Drawing on global historical and current examples, it explores how states design and implement migration policies and analyzes the roles of key actors such as political parties, employers, civil society, and migrants themselves. Students will investigate differences across policy areas, including border control, family reunification, and labor migration. The course equips students with the theoretical and empirical tools needed to understand and critically assess the forces shaping migration policymaking today.

New course, not yet available.

L’objet de ce cours est de présenter les principaux modèles et cadres analytiques mobilisables
pour l’étude des régimes de gestion des ressources naturelles, des régimes de production
agricoles et des régimes de conservation de celles-ci. Les perspectives privilégiées sont
notamment celles de l’étude des commons (institutions et formes d’appropriation et de
gestion collective des ressources) et celle de l’écologie politique. L’approche retenue est
appliquée et interdisciplinaire.

This course is an introduction to R, a free, open-source software environment for statistical computing. The software is very popular but difficult to use at first. R is characterised by enormous flexibility, allowing the user to perform sophisticated statistical procedures or simulations, but is less intuitive compared to other statistical software. The course will mainly use data and analysis techniques related to epidemiology and biomedical science. The course is designed for people who have never used R before.

The first part is an online module on Adam with an online exam at the end. The time required to complete the online part will vary greatly from person to person. People who are familiar with similar scripting languages (e.g. Stata, SAS, Python) will naturally find their way around more quickly. People without such prior knowledge will take on average 4 to 6 hours to complete (excluding the exam). The exam must be completed the day before the start of the onsite block course. You can take the online exam as many times as you like, but there must be at least 10 minutes between two attempts.
The 2nd part of the course (2nd week Thursday and Friday) will be on-site with lectures and practical sessions.

By the end of the course, students will be able to use R for basic statistical analysis and data visualisation. They will be aware of common pitfalls and the software’s strengths and limitations.
This blended learning course is in 2 parts.

This course/seminar focuses on theoretical and empirical debates related to reciprocal effects between environmental management practices and lives and livelihoods of “marginal” populations (from rural areas, from developing countries or among minorities). It will draw on classical and current research in sustainable livelihoods, in “political ecology”, in development studies and other related disciplines.

The students will develop a research project from start to finish as a key component of the field course. The instructors will guide them through this process to help them build autonomy in an unfamiliar field context and a foreign language.

Writing articles for peer-reviewed journals is a must for researchers, as this is the prime means of communicating exciting new results to the scientific community; moreover, an academic career is often evaluated on the basis of the number of peer-reviewed articles one has been able to publish in journals (if possible journals with high impact factors). It is therefore worth learning the rules of writing such articles at an early stage. This webinar is designed to introduce researchers to the rules and context of writing scientific articles and to provide researchers with opportunities to advance and improve their own writing. Four modules will lead participants through the essential rules, tools, and context of scientific writing, and provide time for questions and answers. Students will also have an opportunity to practice their skills in individual exercises, work on their scientific texts, and act as peers in group assignments. In addition, one individual coaching session will be offered to each student during the course. Topics will include understanding who one’s audience is, choosing an appropriate journal, working on key messages, structuring an article (IMRAD), doing the different parts of an article efficiently, writing concisely and precisely, using paragraph structure and other language tricks, how to refer to relevant literature, doing tables and figures, and submitting an article and suggesting reviewers.
Eligibility requirements: Max. 10 participants. Full members of the IGS North-South will be given priority. But international associate members are also encouraged to participate in this course.
Completion of assignments is compulsory to pass the course. Students may miss no more than one webinar. Please consider that participating students need approx. 1 day for preparatory work between the sessions.
It is important that you have good internet access during the sessions. A headset is recommended to participate in the webinars.
Learning objectives:
Participants have structured knowledge of, and the necessary skills for, planning scientific articles and writing them effectively; in particular, they know how to:
• Identify their audience and tailor their key messages accordingly;
• Structure a scientific paper according to acknowledged rules (“IMRAD”);
• Write and revise their work for clarity and effectiveness;
• Find help and tools when they work on their theses and prepare their articles for publication in reputed scientific journals.

Topics:
1. Loops and vectorization
2. Writing functions
3. Visualization through maps
4. Creating basic R shiny applications
5. Using Markdown to create documents

After this course, the participants should be equipped with advanced techniques in R to further analyze, visualize and document their data.