Social Change

How do revolutions emerge without anyone expecting them? How did social norms about same sex marriage change more rapidly than anyone anticipated? Why do some social innovations take off with relative ease, while others struggle for years without spreading? More generally, what are the forces that [...]

This is a course on social norms, the rules that glue societies together. It teaches how to diagnose social norms, and how to distinguish them from other social constructs, like customs or conventions. These distinctions are crucial for effective policy interventions aimed to create new, beneficial norms or eliminate [...]

Have you ever wondered how playing games can help us to train people, deal with societal challenges or raise awareness of contemporary social issues? In this MOOC you will learn the ins and outs of games that are designed with exactly those purposes in mind: serious games. We will [...]

This course covers scripts and schemas, the cognitive structures in which social expectations are embedded, and their relationship with social norms. The course then examines the essentials of norm abandonment, including the relations between personal beliefs and social expectations. We will also evaluate existing intervention strategies, including legal [...]

This course is for activists, artists, and thinkers who wish to better understand and participate in social change. We will focus on the prolific and exciting overlap between socially engaged art and cultural practices generated by recent social movements around the world. Rather than assess the political efficacy of [...]

Este curso es para activistas, artistas y pensadores que deseen entender mejor el cambio social y participar en él. El contenido del curso enfoca en la coincidencia prolífica y emocionante entre el arte socialmente comprometido y prácticas culturales generadas por recientes movimientos sociales en todo el mundo. Más que [...]