{"id":29276,"date":"2025-06-30T09:44:06","date_gmt":"2025-06-30T01:44:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/about\/?post_type=futures-platform&p=29276"},"modified":"2025-09-26T10:41:20","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T02:41:20","slug":"after-war-rebuilding-futures-through-the-global-futures-challenge-2025","status":"publish","type":"futures-platform","link":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/about\/futures-platform\/after-war-rebuilding-futures-through-the-global-futures-challenge-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"After War: Rebuilding Futures Through the Global Futures Challenge 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In a world fractured by increasing global conflict, the Global Futures Challenge After War<\/em> offered a rare chance to not just study history, but to shape what comes next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Held over the mid-year break, the intensive 25-credit program brought together Â鶹ֱ²¥ students across disciplines\u2014including Engineering, Project Management, International Relations, Architecture, Urban Design, and more\u2014to grapple with one of the world\u2019s most pressing challenges: how to rebuild lives, social, political and educational systems, and physical infrastructure after war.
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Led by Professor Farida Fozdar, Dean of Global Futures, who was supported by academics and practitioners who had worked with the UN, private resource companies, and other organisations in peacekeeping, reconstruction and so on, the program asked students to build on theory and current practice to imagine scalable solutions to post-conflict displacement, and physical, mental, social, economic and political destruction, in a fictional country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Professor Farida Fozdar, Dean Global Futures<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYoung people can feel overwhelmed by what\u2019s going on in the world. This unit offered a positive opportunity to design feasible solutions. After war, we need bricks and mortar, roads, hospitals and so on. But we also need new ways of thinking\u2014ways that center community, culture, sustainability, and healing<\/em>,\u201d said Professor Fozdar. \u201cThis challenge is about equipping our students with the tools to lead those conversations and solutions. Students created fantastic responses to the ten challenges we set\u2014one group designing cheap and accessible water purification systems, another a set of political reforms to reduce the likelihood of insurgencies, another a portable educational technology for use in remote areas, another accessible housing solutions, another a system for public contributions to support honesty in journalism, and another a community centre with programs to build resilience, skills and joy<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For participants, the experience was as demanding as it was transformative. Students were placed in multidisciplinary teams to tackle the layered complexities of rebuilding in post-conflict settings. Students considered not only material logistics but also questions of equity, inclusion, and cultural preservation.<\/p>\n\n\n