Bridging differences through classroom simulations: Teaching Global Environmental Governance to international and interdisciplinary PhD students

The course Global Environmental Governance Today–Actors, Institutions, Complexity is an in- terdisciplinary PhD course and has welcomed participants from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds with equally varied prior knowledge on environmental governance practices and theories. Thus, every year, participants include students who are not familiar with international relations theories such as realism, institutionalism, or constructivism, as well as PhD candidates in political science who are entirely familiar with such theories and corresponding concepts. We aim to provide an inspiring course for all of them that provides them with new ideas and insights on global environmental governance with its key actors, institutions and processes.

We have chosen a teaching approach where we combine three formats: information-intensive lec- tures, participatory seminars, and simulation exercises. The lectures are classical, frontal types of sessions in which the readers’ theoretical and conceptual knowledge is offered in an accessible way for different disciplinary backgrounds and discussed with the participants. In the seminars we focus on the students’ PhD projects and their links to questions of environmental governance. As our third element, the simulation exercises pursue an experiential learning approach (Brock and Cameron 1999). Here we elaborate on the design of two simulations: a gamified and alter- native approach to negotiations inspired by Bruno Latour’s Politics of Nature (2004) and Earth Summit type negotiations.