Register your Interest for a 2026 TD Course
Proposals are now invited for participation in the TD courses, which will run in 2026.
The Expression of Interest form for 2026 is now available for staff to download, complete and submit to cft@auckland.ac.nz no later than Monday 6 May at 5PM.
If your submission is successful, you will then be asked to fill out a second form to provide a little more detail. You can look at an example of a similar form from last year here.
April Ideation Sessions
To support proposals for Transdisciplinary Requirement Courses to launch in 2026, two ideation sessions took place in April, run by members of the TD Leadership Team.
Learn more about what was discussed and the proposed topics and contact details below.
We encourage you to review the topics and the brief descriptions and engage with topics where you could team up to submit an EOI together, contribute, and/or learn more about the complex problem.
Health in Modern Society/Health for All
Complex problem: What it means to be healthy in modern society
Contact: Roger Booth & Victor Dieriks
Potential topics:
- Personal health (genetics, cultural, environmental; physical and mental)
- Information / Mis-information; influencers and marketing
- Technology/ Human interaction; “new species”
- Paying for health – Who?
- Town planning, social housing design
Living (or thriving) on the Eastern Edge
Complex problem: Our disaster risk management is not fit for purpose in NZ and globally
Contact: Jan Lindsay
Potential topics:
- Hazard/disaster focused
- Place based – looking at a range of concepts and range of hazards / multi-hazard risk, top down vs bottom up approach
- Earth scientist, health and psychology, physical health, communities, iwi engagement, local knowledge, infrastructure (e.g. health and engineering, lifeline utilities, communications), natural environment.
- How can students contribute to future risks?
The Powerful Consumer
Complex problem: How corporations have restricted consumers’ power to shape society; control of data and information
Contact: Christine Yip & An Hertogen
Potential topics:
- Who holds the power? Ethical questions/ Legal questions re: powerful corporations that own our data and influence our decisions
- Influencers / Ethical business – marketing manipulation/ accountability
- Resource use – how do you achieve sustainable consumption
- Control of data and information – we willingly give away our data and information, and how it is used for and against us
Life in Bytes
Complex problem: Overuse of social media and its effects
Contact: Hee-seung Irene Lee
Potential topics:
- How it works – How you navigate social media as a person, How to understand social media (what it does to you and for you)
- Addiction
- Fundamental aspects – positive and negative aspects
- Data science/ Media studies / Global studies, Political studies / Gender and nutrition / Psychology
- New Zealand specific vs Global
Fast Fashion
Complex problem: Many people are divorced from the reality of human involvement in the creation of clothing – machines are not sophisticated enough to perform the labour
Contact: Peter Shand
Potential topics:
- From manufactured materialities to consumption and the aftermath of consumption
- What happens to the billions of things that are not purchased? What happens to the things that we do buy?
- Narrative thread of a journey / Environmental (e.g. How much water required to create denim) / Labour hours per garment (now vs. then)
- Class systems/ labour economics
- Environmental scientists / consumerists / gender studies / body politics
Future of Sport
Complex problem: Sport is under threat from a number of angles at both a local and a global level. The rise of a global media system has brought global sport to local attention, threatening sporting traditions and unravelling the thread between people and place.
Contact: Chris McMillan
Potential topics:
- Future of Sport in the context of Aotearoa New Zealand
- History of sport, issues in the future of sport, from gender and national identity to technology and climate change
- Changing Bodies / Vulnerable people being able to exercise less and less
- Inequalities / limits of human bodies and performance
- AI and computational modelling in the future of sport
- Potential to connect with ‘Translational Medicine’ involving anatomy/engineering/ethics/physiology/computer modeling
Climate Change & Health
Complex problem: How can individuals be agents for change for both climate change and their own health?
Contact: Gigi Lim
Potential topics:
- Climate change’s impact on health and healthcare’s impact on climate change
- Impact of climate change on health of vulnerable populations / inequalities
- How to develop adaptive mechanisms
- Climate change related effects to health – dementia / sustainable development group
War and Peace
Complex problem: War and peace are phenomena that have plagued humanity for generations. This subject will explore the different aspects of conflict, as well as ideas about how to prevent and resolve wars so that the people and nations may co-exist peacefully.
Contact: Anna Hood
Potential topics:
- This historical roots of conflicts and attempts that have been made throughout history to prevent and resolve conflict / The political dynamics of war and peace – theories of conflict, diplomacy, statecraft and the role of international organisations like the UN
- The economics of conflict: costs of war, resource allocation, arms trade, sanction and post-war reconstruction
- Psychology of war: the psychological forces behind war; the psychological impacts of war on individuals
- Peace studies / theories and practices of conflict resolution/ mediation, peacebuilding, non-violent resistance/ transitional justice and reconciliation processes
- The role of art and music in war and peace / the role of AI in wars and peacebuilding initiatives
Human Communication in the 21st century
Complex problem: Human communication is unique and different from animal communication. It is socially interactive, and we use it for a range of different functions. We can tell others how we feel, joke, tell stories, ask for information, persuade a friend to change their mind. This is just a limited number of functions we use language to communicate with others. For centuries human communication has been face-to-face but with the technological advances we have now how we communicate has shifted and is changing. Is that for the better? Will face to face communication become less important?
Contact: Elaine Ballard
Potential topics:
- Our human uniqueness: What happens if there is no social interaction?
- Children who miss out on social interaction never develop language to the level of being able to communicate with others e.g. feral children (case of Genie), children neglected in orphanages/ Individuals with hearing impairments
- How do we learn to communicate? What is in place to become a good communicator? Early years / Primary school years / Adolescence
- The neuroscience of communication / Brain activation in monolinguals and multilinguals / Miscommunication
- Bilingualism and multilingualism / Cultural differences / Different dialects of English / Different languages / Speaking more than one language, what barriers does this create?
- Health issues/ Legal issues
- The promise and dangers of technology / Generative AI / Social Media / Instant translation services, so why even learn another language? The dominance of English online, is there room for other languages?
Prosumerism & Future of Work
Complex problem: Prosumerism in a digital world, ethical / moral dilemmas that surround idea of prosumerism
Contact: Simon Schofield
Potential topics:
- Prosumers shape the future of work / Impacts on humans and the way we work / demand for quickfire digital knowledge
- How do we deal with technology in an appropriate way? How do you understand what is real?
- Identity / Data sovereignty / Indigenous rights / cultural appropriation
- How do we become prosumers? / content creation / what do you do when you create information? – is it your information? Blurred lines and obscured boundaries / Real vs avatar?
- How does the eco-system change to support this? What are the moral and ethical obligations across different levels?
Indigenous Youth Offending
Complex problem: Youth offending is a complex societal issue and has a range of implications that can negatively impact on the trajectory of young people. It can also cause harm in our society and communities.
Contact: Tania Cliffe-Tautari
Potential topics:
- Global lens to local New Zealand
- Mental health / disabilities, policy implications / legislative frameworks/ education/ practitioners and working at the coal face
- Youth Offending spans across a number of sectors and can be explored from/through different lenses: community/ critical thinking / Preventative leadership / Restorative lens / Kaupapa Maori / Whānau ora approach / ethical lens
- Is there a link with healthy communities or poverty?
- Human development/ Social psychology/ Media and communication / Politics/ AI, facial recognition/ Health