40 years of gender in the DPU
Mobilising Learning for Change: 40 Years of Gender in the DPU – Caren Levy reflects.
In its 70th anniversary year, the DPU is not only celebrating seven decades of higher education in international development policy and planning, They are also recognising 40 years of working actively in the DPU with gender justice in teaching, research, capacity building and practice-based work, and public engagement.
The DPU’s decentred learning approach in the context of international policy and planning, identifies five principles of a “pedagogical approach, which has at its core a commitment towards knowledge co-production. These five principles are that learning is relational, reflexive, embedded, active and collective.
“Practicing learning that embraces these five principles demands intellectual vigilance and openness.” writes Caren Levy, Professor of Transformative Urban Planning at DPU. “It is an engagement with a transdisciplinary practice that seeks to hold multiple knowledges across disciplines in simultaneous view. Embedded in this is the grounded reality of diverse gendered lives and expressions, often painful in their inequalities and absence of respect for human rights, are collective endeavours reflecting the power and inspiration of doing things differently and together.”